"Happens in the best of families," Lewrie cryptically commiserated, with the fingers of his right hand crossed.
"Exactly!" Peel drolly replied, looking Lewrie up and down with a tongue planted firmly in his own cheek, a cynical brow arched.
"You were sayin'…" Lewrie harumphed, coughing into a fist.
"I was near an American emigrant, myself, one of the Remittance Men exiled for his own good," Peel further informed him, "but for meeting Mister Twigg. Cater-cousin of my father's in the Foreign Office arranged an interview. Overseas employment, exciting doings, picking up foreign culture and new languages… robust, outdoorsy work…"
"Meet fascinatin' new people… betray 'em," Lewrie stuck in.
"Yes, good fun, all round," Peel said, laughing out loud for a bit. : 'Til Mister Twigg retired, it was. I suppose you could say I'm… compromised, now, in a way. See, Pelham does have something over me. That Major whose fiancee I diddled, well… his father's country place and Pelham's father's estate are nearly next door. Both fathers took their seats in Lords the same month, and both families attend the same parish church, their ancestral pew-boxes cross the aisle from each other. Knew all about me from the outset."
"Had it in for you, right off, hey? The bastard," Lewrie said. "The arrogant little pop-in-jay!"
"He is all that, and more," Mr. Peel mused. "Snobbish, impatient with his inferiors. Sure of his wits and talent, when he doesn't have a tenth of Twigg's trade-craft, nor an hundredth of his sagacity or patience, his cleverness."
"When not orderin' the murder of thousands," Lewrie sneered.
"Sublimely self-confident when he has no right to be," Mr. Peel Went on, "and not a young fellow open to suggestions. An uncle, a former ambassador to Austria, sponsored him with the Foreign Office. Naturally, he was shoved into our branch. Twigg was leery, soon as he'd briefed him. Warned me to mind my p's and q's, he did. Same as he cautioned me to keep a wary eye on you. Sorry."
"And who wouldn't, I ask you?" Lewrie posed, too engrossed with the hope of "useful dirt" on the pestiferous Pelham.
"Pelham put me on notice, right off," Peel told him, "that I'd best tread wary and sing small, or I'd be an un-employed ex-captain of cavalry, an «-employed agent, and I was no proper gentleman, to boot! Fetch and tote, run his chores? He'd do the thinking, thankee very much. Damn him, he enjoys having me on tenter-hooks."
"Surely he must know by now that he's been sold a complete bill of goods on this Saint Domingue business," Lewrie scoffed. "He can't expect to win, after better men than he broke their health and reputations trying."
"Sometimes he makes me wonder, Lewrie, he truly does," Mr. Peel said with a slow, befuddled shake of his head. "Pelham's one of those who think pot-holes fill before they step in them, as if the rules are different for the rich and titled. Pelham's smart enough to see this mission as a morass, but it's rare to see him suffer a single qualm. Then he comes over all energetic, as if, does he scheme and wheedle hard enough, he's going to win and prove his mettle, despite it being a bloody pot-mess!"
"Let him, then," Lewrie said with a dismissive shrug. "He sent you on a journeyman's errand to finish off Choundas, and ride 'whipper-in' on me… and thank your lucky stars for't. We're a side-show, to Pelham's lights, whilst he stays on Jamaica with his eyes on what he thinks is the main prize. He won't even know he chose wrong 'til it's much too late. Whereas the do-able part of his compound orders- our part-is well in hand, and damn'-near done."
"Well… when you put it that way," Peel said, perking up some.
"How did you get saddled with this chore, and Pelham, anyway?"
"Well, other than Mister Twigg, no one else knew as much about Choundas and his methods," Peel tossed off, as if it was of no matter. "Then, discovering you were out here, so aptly placed… someone else of whom I had personal knowledge… even Twigg said my presence was a necessity. I tried to stay in the Mediterranean, but…" he said, shrugging. "Pelham came as a surprise. By then, it was simply too late to demur without poisoning my credentials with the bureau. And I relish this job!"
"Hmmm," Lewrie mused, pulling at his nose. "So all Pelham knows is what you tell him in your reports?" Lewrie broadly hinted, tapping the side of his nose sagely.
"Lewrie, that sounds suspiciously… mutinous," Mr. Peel gaped (or pretended to) with a hand to his chest as if aghast at what he was hearing. "You don't actually mean that I should lie to him! Or… are you?" Peel added, sounding almost wishful.
"Not lie, Peel, no," Lewrie quibbled, "just couch things in the best light. Give him chapter and verse of your best justifications as to the Yankee Doodles. Just passing mention of the faint possibility of secret cooperation leadin' to better things," Lewrie sweetly coaxed. "And make sure that Twigg and your superiors back in London are kept appraised of what a spectacular opportunity just… fell into your lap. Your lap, Peel, not Pelham's."
"Well… Twigg would like to know what we're doing, I'd wager," Peel muttered, indeed looking a trifle ill-at-ease at the ploy. "He's still got good entree at the Foreign Office. And Choundas was the main target to him, all along. Twigg was never taken with the scheme about buying Saint Domingue by suborning L'Ouverture or Rigaud. In a private moment, he conjured me to not be too disappointed did the larger scheme fail."
"Twigg must have seen that Pelham would be in over his head, and so aspiring a twit he most-like plans t'be Prime Minister," Lewrie said with a sneer. "Yet you still go out of your way to uphold that, too."
"Do recall, Captain Lewrie," Peel said with his nose in the air, "that I, in my fashion and present line o' work, am as duty-bound as you to your Admiralty. To support my superiors in all they do and obey orders with alacrity and enthusiasm. No matter if I think them daft as bats," he sardonically commented. "Though I am no longer an Army officer, I still know how to 'soldier,' sir!"
"One hopes, when you led a troop of horse, you could adjust to changes, though, not just clatter about obedient to out-dated orders like a mechanical, clockwork toy grenadier. When out of touch with a higher authority… as we are at present, on a 'roving commission'?" Lewrie pressed, determined not to appear impatient with Peel's sturdy sense of honour. Surely in his line of work, such was a hindrance!
"Well, of course," Peel allowed.
"But you think like a soldier, not a seafarer, Mister Peel, and I will tell you the diff'rence," Lewrie added, smiling now, sure that he had him lured, hooked, and in play, with the gaffing and landing to come as certain as sunrise. "Can't send a galloper off to the colonel and expect an answer an hour or so later. Once out of sight of land, we're completely on our own, d'ye see, and weeks or months 'twixt new instructions, with only the vaguest idea where we'd be found if anyone tried. It all depends on time, distance… and the winds, Peel."
"I have noticed that ships are driven by the winds, believe it or not!" Peel retorted, getting his back up again.
"Pelham lies downwind of us, Peel, nearly ten days to a whole fortnight there-to-here, close-hauled to Antigua," Lewrie explained with a smirky, confidential air. "No matter how angry you make him he can only cob you long-distance. The packet brig he'd use to communicate with London starts at a disadvantage to the packets which depart from upwind of Jamaica, d'ye see? Do we put into Antigua, the next few days, assumin' a Jamaica packet's in port and ready to sail, your report takes a full week t'reach him. A day more, say, for Pelham to scream and run about in tiny circles before he damns you by post, but it'll be six weeks 'fore his irate scribblin' reaches London… and perhaps six weeks before they tell him he can lop yer prick off. And Twigg and your superiors'd have your reports two weeks to a month before that. By then, we could very well have ev'rything in our bailiwick wrapped up neat as Boxing Day gifts! Choundas… and a preliminary alliance with the Americans, both. Then who's boss-cock, and who's the goat, eh, Mister Peel?"
"Dear Lord, Lewrie!" Peel exclaimed with a shudder of dread, and looked about himself for the prim Mr. Winwood, who would chide Vice-Admirals for blasphemy. "Wh
y is it every time you start scheming, that I suddenly feel like a prize ram being led into the shearing pen? No, worse! A runt ram, bound for the ball-cutter shears! These years you spent on your roving commissions, so independent… I fear you've been hopelessly corrupted."
"O' course I have!" Lewrie cheerfully laughed. "That, and all that 'drink and bad companions' I mentioned, too. But you do believe we'll get Choundas, in the end?"
"Yes, I do. I'm sure of it," Peel was forced to agree.
"Do you think we'll get the Yankees into alliance with us?"
"Well, I've my doubts on that'un," Peel demurred.
"No matter," Lewrie quickly dismissed with a wave of his hand. " 'Tis the effort that matters, the chance that beguiles, when London hears of it… from you. Surely it's an option they already considered, but… to see one of their agents hard at work on it? One o' their delirium tremens dreams, most-like, right up there with… bright-red, man-eatin', dancin' sheep!"
"Well, there is that," Peel muttered, gnawing on a thumbnail. "By God, Lewrie, the effort would seem bold, even inspired! I do take your point. Did one wish to present the Crown with a plan more likely of fruition… as ambitious as seizing Saint Domingue, that's certain… uhm, to steal attention from Pelham, it goes without saying," Mr. Peel fretfully speculated, almost turning queasy for a moment.
"Mmm-hmm," Lewrie encouraged, with a gesture that could be misconstrued as miming the feeding of one's rival over-side to the sharks.
"Though some might take it as immoderate boasting," Peel fidgeted. "Tooting one's own horn, Of being that sort, mean t'say."
"Under-handed," Lewrie drolly supplied.
"Quite."
"Sneaking," Lewrie said on, "not the proper, gentlemanly thing."
"Well, yes…" Peel replied, cutty-eyed with embarrassment.
"Better than spending your whole career being thought of as an unimaginative rear-ranker," Lewrie beguiled. "A back-bencher Vicar of Bray. And disappointing old Twigg's expectations of you?"
"Well, there is that," Peel said, stung to the quick by the idea of letting his old mentor down. "One could express the hope. Pose the outside possibility…!"
"There's a good fellow!" Lewrie congratulated him.
Gaffed, landed, and in the creel! he silently chortled; But, my God… what a stiff and righteous prick!
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Quite a stir we're causing, sir," Lt. Langlie said as Proteus rounded up into the wind to let go her best bower at the "top" end of English Harbour's outer roads. She had been last to enter port, after Sumter, Oglethorpe, and their five prizes, which had first been mistaken for a whole squadron of seven American warships, a sight never seen before, or even imagined, in these waters.
"And indeed we should, Mister Langlie," Lewrie smugly replied, tricked out in his best shore-going uniform and sword. He didn't envy the Antiguan merchants, once they found that the prizes would go back to their masters after a brief hearing at the Admiralty Court, and no profits would be made from their, and their cargoes', sale. What started as an eight-day wonder would become a two-day thrill, and the only ones to gain from it would be the taverns, the eateries, and the prostitutes when victorious Yankee sailors were allowed ashore.
Lewrie thought it would be interesting to see how the shoals of French prisoners were handled. Would America and Great Britain share the cost of gaoling them aboard the hulks? Which power could accept a French officer's promise of parole? Which would negotiate his half-pay so he could keep himself in town until exchanged? And once paid, would France reimburse the United States, since they were not at full war with each other? Lewrie snidely thought those Frogs'd most-like sulk in dockside taverns 'til The Last Trump, since France
hadn't taken any U.S. Navy ships in combat, yet. And most-like wouldn't, not here in the Caribbean, at least.
Proteus had made her number to the shore forts, had fired off a gun salute to Rear-Adm. Harvey, commanding the Leeward Islands Station, and had received a proper twelve guns in reply. Just after, she'd come in "all standing," swinging up to her anchorage and furling all canvas in a closely choreographed flurry, the last scrap vanishing in concert with the anchor's splash. That impressive arrival, his news, and his testimony at the Prize Court would win his frigate, and himself, a bit of the island's adulation, perhaps enough to wake the Antigua Prize Court from its usual torpor, and bludgeon its subsidiary on Dominica into action concerning their own prize that still swung idle in Prince Rupert Bay. Frankly, he could use the extra money to spruce up the wear-and-tear on his wardrobe and his accommodations. Besides, his last good "run ashore" had been months before at Christopher Cashman's boisterous send-off at Kingston.
Lewrie rocked on the balls of his feet, eyes half-closed in fond speculation of good meals, fresh-water washing of all his salt-stained and itchy garments, as Lt. Langlie saw to their anchoring. Him ashore in Sunday-Divisions best, the St. Vincent and Camperdown medals algeam against his shirt ruffles. Successful frigate captains could expect a warm welcome from merchants, and from the ladies…
He knew Antigua of old. Why, there'd be ravishing matrons, and "grass-widows" simply bored to tears by the local society; there'd be delectably lissome young misses, with lashes and fans all aflutter as he languidly smiled, half-bowed, and doffed his hat. There'd be smiles in return from the more-promising "runners" among the ladies, the well-hooded, secretive "perhapses" if not bolder, carnal "come-hithers."
Had he at Cashman's going-away? No, and come to think on it, he had been retaining his "humours" like a Catholic monk, lately, abjuring even tame relief in the practice known in the Navy as "Boxing the Jesuit"-the one the physicians and parsons condemned for turning manly youth into feeble wheezers, with hair on their pink palms, too!
Why the Devil not? he asked himself; a man wasn 't made to…
Quickly followed by thoughts of Caroline, and reconciliation… then of Desmond McGilliveray, and even more bastardly gullions turning up fifteen years hence to plague him, hmm… perhaps, sadly, not. It was a mortal pity, for the Antigua ladies were raised right in his estimation, as round-heeled and obliging a pack of "genteel" wantons as anyone could wish for… the sort who'd trip you with a daintily shod foot, then manage to be the first to hit the floor, cunningly asprawl beneath you!
"Anchor's set, sir," Lt. Langlie reported, and Lewrie turned to take note of Langlie's relief; at last, his onerous task of First Officer could ease, in harbour. Well, mostly, anyway. "And the battery is secured from the salute."
"Very well, Mister Langlie," Lewrie replied, leaving his lusty reveries. "We'll row out the stern kedge to… there," he directed, pointing five points off their larboard bows, almost abeam. "We have room to swing by one anchor, but I'd admire did we haul her up so the prevailing wind's off our larboard quarters, for an easy departure in a few days. And not go 'aboard' a nearby ship, do we swing foul."
"Aye aye, sir," Langlie said, looking even more relieved.
"Your pardon, Captain, but there seems to be a boat bound for us," Midshipman Elwes announced. "Just there, sir."
Sure enough; once Lewrie had lifted his glass, he could see the colours in the stern-sheets of a large rowing barge, one sporting fully eight oarsmen, a bow-man, a coxswain, and a useless midshipman aft by the tiller, with a Lieutenant seated forward of them, along with another man dressed like some sort of buskined sportsman out for a "shoot" on his private game park.
Commanding Admiral's barge, maybe the Port Captain's, Lewrie intuited; officer a flag-lieutenant, the pasty-faced shorebound sort, but why the civilian!' Lewrie allowed himself a wry smirk, supposing that a functionary from the island's governor-general had been sent out to see what all the fuss was about, and had been caught sitting for a portrait as Nimrod the Mighty Hunter, with fowling-piece, custom rifled musket, a brace of setters at his feet with parrots in their mouths, and all.
Damme though, he further wondered; what's left on Antigua worth huntin' anymore? Rats, and runaway sailors?
; "Permission to mount the quarterdeck?" Mr. Peel enquired halfway up the larboard ladder, natty in his other suit of "ditto," this one in sombre grey rather than black, with a subdued maroon waist-coat.
"Oh, shit! Oh, Hell!" Lewrie spat, lowering his telescope for a second so he could rub his disbelieving eye.
"Well, if you feel that way about it…" Peel griped, piqued.
"Mister the Honourable Grenville Pelham is come to call on us," Lewrie told him. "In that barge yonder."
"What? Pelham! WhatthebloodyHellishedoinghere?" Peel gawped, leaping to the quarterdeck, the bulwarks, and seizing Lewrie's glass for a gape-jawed squint of his own. "Where… oh. My eyes!"
"No, borrow mine, I insist," Lewrie grumbled. "God's Teeth!"
"At least he looks pleased," Peel took hopeful note. "He's up and waving like his best horse just came in first. Hmmm… this may not be too bad. 'Ne defice coeptis … 'Falter not in what thou hast begun.' Valerius Flaccus," Peel cited, taking what heart he could.
That 'un made Lewrie wince; it had been that ne'er-do-well Peter Rushton's droll advice, just after they had set fire to the governor's coach-house at Harrow, which had gone up in a most spectacular blaze, surpassing their wildest expectations; just before he and that other scoundrel, Clothworthy Chute, had gotten clean away, leaving Lewrie to be nabbed with the port-fire in his hands. The caning they'd escaped (since Lewrie was stupidly "honourable" enough not to tattle) had been Biblical; which thrashing hadn't held a candle to the one his father, Sir Hugo, had given him after he'd been sent down in shame- along with the long bill for damages! Falter not, indeed. Pah!
Havoc`s Sword Page 31
