The King's Commission

by Dewey Lambdin

  “Back Home?”

  “Hell, no. A captaincy costs near twenty-five hundred pounds for a good regiment,” Cashman chuckled. “No, unless God passes a miracle, I’ll be soldiering in cheaper places. Here in the Fever Islands, back in the East Indies, where nobody in his right mind would want to go. A regiment like that’s a buyer’s market. Cost me only three hundred pounds to become an ensign when word got out we were going to Madras. People were ’changing or selling out like the hounds of hell were at their heels. But, if it weren’t for the loot, I’d have never had enough for a lieutenancy in the Fusiliers. One way or another, the old Regiment’ll have to take me back soon as I get home, and when the Army’s reduced, there’ll be a chance to buy up.”

  “Thank God the Navy doesn’t go for purchased commissions or commands.” Alan shivered, thinking how menial he would be that instant if he had had to depend on his father spending money to get rid of him. “Why didn’t you give the Fleet a try?”

  “Fourth son.” Cashman shrugged. “And damn-all inheritance for any of the others. Already had the future farmer, a sailor, and a churchman, and I had a choice of clerking in Ipswich or going for a soldier. Ever been in Ipswich? Last time I was home, I thought I’d freeze my prick off, and that was in summer, mind. And Suffolk’s pretty damned dull any time of the year. I love England well as any man, but there’s something about the tropics, if you can survive in ’em. At least it’s warm, and not too many churchmen breathing down your neck with their ‘shalt-nots.’”

  “What do you think of this mission of ours?” Alan asked him.

  “Frankly? I think it’s a rum’un,” Cashman whispered, though the sound of his fusiliers banging away at the keg would have covered his doubts from the men. “If we want Florida back so bloody bad, why not put a couple of good regiments together from the Jamaica garrison and make it a proper landing? Oh, aye, take along some pretties to buy off the locals, maybe form some temporary levies like East Indian sepoys. From what I hear, these Creeks’d make good soldiers if somebody took the effort to train ’em. Good skirmishers and woodland fighters, proper armed. Hell and damnation, I’d like to have all my company with me, if that won’t serve. We’re too thin on the ground to suit me.”

  “Bring the rest of your present regiment?”

  “Peacock and them?” Cashman laughed sourly. “They’d get themselves butchered. Less’n two hundred of ’em, anyway, and not worth a tinker’s damn when it comes to skirmishing. Turn that lot loose in the woods and they’d make so much noise, and get so lost, any Indian in the world’d have ’em for his breakfast”

  “My sailors won’t be much better, I’m afraid. Cony and some of the party coming with us are country lads, one jump ahead of the magistrate for poaching, but nothing like what one needs against Indians and Dago troops who know the country,” Alan confessed.

  “Here, you sound like you’ve been around before. Served ashore, have you?” Cashman asked.

  “At Yorktown. We escaped,” Alan told him with a touch of pride. “With a light company of Loyalists from the Carolinas.”

  “Whew,” Cashman whistled. “So, how do you feel about this trip of ours?”

  “I’m a touch leery, too. Oh, it sounded grand when they offered it to us, and we couldn’t say ‘no,’ anyway,” Alan told him with a shrug. “Supper with our admiral, being admitted to high plans, you know. But my captain over there is worried, and now he’s got me doing it.”

  “You should.”

  “I don’t like leaving this sloop in the swamps, at the mercy of those Indians,” Alan went on. “What happens if McGilliveray, or White Turtle or whatever, can’t convince them to keep their hands off while we’re gone? From what I’ve read, an Indian thinks it’s his duty in life to lift from strangers whatever’s not nailed down.”

  “Who says we have to leave things laying about to tempt them?” Cashman replied with a twinkle in his eyes. “You know that once we separate from your ship yonder, you and I are equally in command of this mess. You of the sloop and the longboat, I of the land party. Cowell is no soldier, he’s a London paper-pusher with dreams of adventure. And this McGilliveray is only an advisor. They can’t order us to do a bloody thing. What do you want to do?”

  “I’d like to send San Ildefonso off to sea under my quartermaster,” Alan said after a long moment of thinking. “There’s no reason to leave a large, easily discoverable ship in the swamps. The crew could sicken on the miasmas, get over-run by the Apalachees, or the Spanish could find her and bring force enough to take her.”

  “Best we go quietly on our way up-river,” Cashman agreed.

  “We’re going to be dressed pretty much like Indians in these hunting shirts and whatever, so the Dons don’t know we’re here. So what’s stopping you sending this ship back to sea once we’re landed, if secrecy is so important?”

  “Not a bloody thing,” Alan realized.

  “And if I wanted to bring another squad with me, so we’d have a round dozen skirmishers, there’s no one to gainsay me, either. Out at sea, your ship wouldn’t need a party of soldiers left behind.”

  “What about the samples, then?”

  “Oh, we can take ’em up-river, can’t we?” Cashman asked.

  “Well, this sloop does have a boat of its own, a little eighteen-foot gig. Take five more men to run her under oars, though. Say three minimum, with two of your men aboard as guards.”

  “I can find enough lads to row her, you just give me one sailor to show ’em what to do. That way, I can take six more men, two as guards as you said, spelling each other, and part of the cargo with me.”

  “Cowell and McGilliveray might not like it, mind,” Alan cautioned.

  “The devil with what they like or don’t like,” Cashman said, sure of himself. “They’re only civilians.”

  “They could ruin your career. And mine.”

  “There’s not much more they could do to ruin mine, the way things are going,” Cashman laughed. “How enamored are you of yours?”

  “I don’t want to get cashiered,” Alan said. “I’m getting just good enough at the Navy to want to keep it”

  “You’ll end up on the beach on half-pay soon enough anyway. And this whole expedition is a pretty neck-or-nothing thing. It’s not like it has much hope of turning things around quickly.”

  “So why are you here, if you don’t like it?” Alan demanded.

  “Because I might become a substantive captain out of it,” Cashman told him. “And the way things are going, it’s the only little piece of the war I’ve left. Desperate or not, it beats garrison duty back on Jamaica, you see.”

  “Jesus.”

  “So don’t tell me you weren’t thinking about getting a little fame yourself out of it?” Cashman teased him. “Of course, long as we’re changing things, who says you have to go?”

  “Come, now.”

  “Seriously. If anybody’d asked me as to how we’d pull this off, I’d have stayed off the river entirely. Rivers are like highways in this country. Might as well hire a band. I’d trade for horses with the coastal Indians, and go overland. Lay up by the day, travel by night, disguises or no. If I’d helped plan this, I’d have asked for the Navy to merely get us here and come back to pick us up later. Just like Peacock not to confer with the ones who have to do it. Sail off.”

  “Damned if I will!” Alan spat. “Cowell would really have my hide for funking on him. And my admiral would have my hide a week later for cowardice. No sir!”

  “Alright, then. We go inshore after it’s dark, and we head up-river in the dark, to get as far as we can before it’s light,” Cashman schemed. “Then McGilliveray can turn into any old sort of Indian he likes and lead us the rest of the way, but without having to depend on this coastal tribe, who’re like as not hand-in-glove with the Dons already. We’ll have enough on our plate with the other tribes as it is.”

  “Damn your blood, sir!” Cowell fumed after he had been told of the new arrangements. “This is not what w
e agreed to at all, damme if it’s not! I am charged by His Majesty’s government directly to …”

  “Mister Cowell, Lieutenant Lewrie and I are the senior military representatives,” Cashman argued, as the unloading went on. “Now keep your voice down. Or do you wish to draw every bloody Don within fifty miles to this damned inlet? This way, we are much more secure. The sample goods still get up-river, you get up-river, White Turtle gets up-river, and we run the same bloody risks, but we do it on the sly. More than we would leaving the sloop behind to advert our presence.”

  “I’ll have your hide for this, see if I do not, sir!” Cowell raged, but in a sibilant whisper into the tropical stillness. “Once we are back at Jamaica, Sir Joshua shall hear of this. Your captain shall know of your insubordinate attitude as soon as we rendezvous with his ship! And your colonel, too, Captain Cashman.”

  “The exigencies of the situation, sir,” Alan said, almost quoting Cashman verbatim from one of their later planning sessions once the sloop had left Shrike’s company and made her final run of fifteen miles for the coast that afternoon. “Based on sound military reasoning, and on Captain Cashman’s long experience, with which I concur totally.”

  “I’ll send a letter to your captain before the night’s out, I will!” Cowell went on. “And a despatch to Sir Joshua. If the sloop is no longer germane to our enterprise, she may serve to inform your superiors of my extreme displeasure with your conduct, sir!”

  “Do what you like, sir,” Alan replied with a genial tone.

  “Mister Cowell, I must warn you to keep your voice down, sir,” McGilliveray hissed, coming to their side. “Sound carries a long way at night, and you may be sure someone is watching and listening to every word you say, every action we do, this very minute.”

  It was hard to think of him any longer as young Mister Desmond McGilliveray, since he had shed his poor suitings for a snuff-brown linen shirt with the sleeves cropped off, a breech-clout tied about his waist with a hank of leather thong, a yellow waist sash, and deerskin leggings and moccasins. The bare coppery flesh of his legs, arms and chest revealed intricate tattoos that had been concealed by a European’s togs.

  “Do you know what this impudent … puppy … has done, sir?” Cowell raged. “Him and that jack-a-napes, jumped-up gutter-snipe Cashman?”

  “Please discuss this below decks, and quietly,” Alan cautioned. “And let me get on with the loading, if you please, gentlemen.”

  McGilliveray almost dragged Cowell to the hatch-way and led him below, where they stumbled down the darkened ladder to the lower deck.

  “Gig iss in der vater, zir,” Svensen told him. “Vater butt, biscuit box, zalt meat barricoe, der mast, zails und oars, zir.”

  “Good, Svensen. Andrews shall take her as cox’n, and the soldiers shall do the rowing. Get the hands started on loading her with the smaller pile of goods yonder. As much as you think best. If we can’t get it all aboard, sort out as many different kinds of things.”

  “Zir?” Svensen begged, unwilling to take responsibility with items unfamiliar to him.

  “Then we’ll let Mister Cowell or Mister McGilliveray see to that. You’ll not keep this ship hidden here, as I first told you. Take her out to sea as soon as we’re on our way. Meet up with Shrike and tell the captain we didn’t think it was safe to leave her here.”

  “Aye, zir, t’ank Gott, me neider!”

  “Give him this letter telling him the reasons for my decision. And I expect Mister Cowell shall have one for you, too,” Alan said, smiling. “I shall go below and change.”

  Alan stumbled down to the hold accommodation deck of the small sloop, and stripped out of his uniform as men bustled about past curtains that served as light traps from the hold where they could at least see what they were doing in carrying goods and weapons to the spar deck.

  “This is so damned daft!” he grumbled as he exchanged white slop trousers for an old pair of buff breeches reinforced with leather on the seat and inner thighs, some cavalryman’s castoffs. They were much too big for him, but they would serve. A forest-green linen shirt went on over those, a faded blue sash about his waist outside the shirt, in which he stuck a boarding axe, much the size of an Indian’s tomahawk, a pair of dragoon pistols he had kept as mementos from Yorktown, and a short dagger. Then came cartouche pouch and musket implements slung over his shoulders, and a baldric for a sword.

  He eyed his hanger, the lovely Gill’s in its dark blue leather sheath with the sterling silver fittings, the sea-shell design on the hilt and guard, and the gilt pommel of a lion’s head. It was too precious to him to traipse about before sticky-fingered Indians, or lose, along with his life, if this expedition went sour. With a sigh, he put it down and exchanged it for one of the cheap Spanish cutlasses from the ship’s weapons tub. He went aft to his quarters in the stern and wrote a short note which he wrapped about the scabbard, instructing that if he did not return, it should be sent to his grandmother in Devon whom he had never laid eyes on.

  That act convinced him, if nothing else did, that there was more than usual danger in what they were about to do, and he regretted that he had not taken the time to write a few letters. There was Lucy, whom he had been forbidden from seeing since his disastrous actions of the months before. There was his maternal grandmother, who had rescued him from ignominy and poverty. There was Caroline Chiswick, now safely in the arms of her family in Charleston, if they had not already sailed for England by now. Poverty-stricken she might be, but she had been such a sweet and lovely girl, a little too tall and gawky for fashionable beauty, but damned handsome nonetheless, and devilish smart and delightful to converse with. God help him, he felt a pang for Dolly Fenton, and wished that he were back in her bed that instant. She at least had for a time loved him as well as she was able, and that was damned fine. He still regretted that last hour or so with her, when he had to tell her he was sailing away for good, and that her dreams of a little love-nest for just the two of them could not be. She had wept as quietly as she could, clung to him, given him passionate love once more, saving her real tears and squawls for total privacy. She had been so sweet, too, so dependent, yet good of heart, and, thank God, nowhere near as dumb as Lucy.

  “Might as well write my fucking will while I’m at it!” he muttered, suffering a premonitory chill even as he said it. His insides cooled noticeably, and his stomach got a touch queasy as he finished gathering up a change of clothes and a few personal items in a sea-bag.

  Damnit, this was a bloody undertaking, not like a sea-battle at all, which was gory enough for anyone’s tastes. With McGilliveray to lead them and negotiate, they might be safe as houses, or they could end up tortured to death, screaming for death, and painted savages dancing about waving their own hair and their privates at them in glee!

  “Jesus, I’m scared witless!” he whispered soft as he could in the privacy of his quarters, the temporary luxury of untold space in the former master’s cabin. He had been frightened before. Any time he had to scale the masts. Before battle was joined, when he had time to think about how he could be mangled. The two duels he had fought in his short life. The shelling at Yorktown, or the horrible battle they had fought with Lauzun’s Legion and the Virginia Militia on Guinea Neck before they could escape. Even the first few weeks under Lieutenant Lilycrop’s pitiless eyes as he fumbled his way to competence had tied his plumbing into hot knots, but nothing like this icy dread.

  “Damn the Navy, damn King George, damn everybody!” he spat, within a touch of begging off at the last minute. It was all he could do to walk to the cabin door and think about joining his party.

  There was a knock on the door, which almost loosed his bowels.

  “Enter,” he bade from a dreadfully dry mouth.

  Cashman stepped inside, clad in pretty much the same rig as Alan, but with the addition of a scarlet officer’s sash.

  “You look like death’s head on a mop-stick,” Cashman said with a quirky little cock of his brows.

  “
How I look is nothing on how I feel,” Alan grumbled.

  “Then let’s liquor our boots,” Cashman suggested, crossing to the former captain’s wine-cabinet. He drew out a wine bottle and took a swig from the neck, then handed the bottle to Lewrie.

  “Ah, that’s the ticket,” Alan sighed. “Incredibly foul vin rouge, my last taste of civilization.”

  “I hope you’ve remembered rum for my troops?” Cashman asked. “God knows how anyone could do what we’re about to do sober.”

  “Aye, rum enough for everyone for three weeks, though not the usual sailor’s measure. A sip, no more.”

  “It’s beginning to feel a touch insane about now, ain’t it?”

  “Insane ain’t the word for it, sir.” Alan shuddered.

  “Call me Christopher,” Cashman told him. “Growl we may, but go we must, you know. Give me that bottle, if you’ve had enough. I feel the need for a generous libation to put me numb enough to get on with the business.”

  “Feeling daunted yourself, hey?”

  “Bloody terrified,” Cashman admitted easily. “You?”

  “I was wondering if I could break a leg or something at the last minute.” Alan grinned back at him. Cashman tipped him a wink.

  “Either way, it’s bloody daft, the way we leap at chances for honor and glory,” Cashman said with a belch, and handed the bottle back, which bottle had diminished in contents remarkably in a very short span of time. “Personally, I think it’s a lot of balls, but that’s what they pay us for. This is the worst time, when one steps out into the unknown. Once we’ve been shoved into motion, it usually goes much better.”

  “That’s been my experience.” Alan nodded. “What about Cowell and McGilliveray?”