“Well, ha,” Rodgers flummoxed, shifting in his chair so hard it squeaked most alarmingly, clearly torn between joy for an old comrade, and his sense of the Conventions. If Lewrie had announced that Lydia was a Hindoo nautch-dancer he’d picked up in Bombay, a swarthy Hottentot maiden from the Kalahari, or a pox-raddled whore he’d tripped over in a Portsmouth alley, Benjamin Rodgers could not have been more stunned.
Should I have called her an actress, or a circus trick-rider? Lewrie asked himself; There’s a lotta that goin’ round, these days!
“You might’ve read about it in the papers, two or three years ago,” Lewrie went on, to fill the awkward silence. “Her husband was an utter beast, with the morals of a drunk monkey, but he could wear a good face in Publick, and fooled everyone. She’s well shot o’ him.”
“Oh, I don’t keep up with all the scandal-mongering newspapers,” Rodgers scoffed. “Gossip, rumours, and slurs don’t signify to me.”
“Unfortunately, Lydia suffered at their hands, even though her suit was … righteous,” Lewrie further admitted. “He’s ruined for all time, and she’s free, and didn’t deserve a jot of it. More innocent than me, ’bout that trial o’ mine for stealin’ slaves.”
“Oh, that ‘Black Alan’ thing,” Rodgers snickered.
“The worst was ‘Saint Alan, the Liberator’,” Lewrie said with a long sigh. “Even though Wilberforce, Hannah More, and their Abolitionist crowd are done with me, I’ll most-like never live that down. Ehm … I told Lydia I owe you a hearty shore supper, with magnums of champagne. If you’d care to meet her?”
“Damme if I haven’t earned one, after four months off Brest,” Rodgers exclaimed, “and I’m down t’my last four bottles o ‘bubbly’, to boot. Good God, stick with frigates, Alan, long as ya can. Once ya get a ship of the line, you’ll die o’ boredom, if the shoals and rocks and the Bay of Biscay don’t get ya first! You’re offering, and I’m accepting, gladly. And I’d be happy to meet your lady.”
“I probably owe ye more than one, just t’ make up for old times and a too-long absence,” Lewrie told him, glad that Benjamin seemed open to meeting Lydia, and waiting to form a first-hand opinion.
The Marine sentry outside the door to the quarterdeck rapped his musket on the oak-planked deck. “Midshipman Lewrie, SAH!” the sentry added with a stamp of his boots.
“Aha!” Captain Benjamin Rodgers said, rising from his chair. “About time, too. Enter!” he called out.
The door opened, admitting a gust of icy wind and a swirl of snow. Mr. Midshipman Sewallis Lewrie stepped in, hat under his arm and his boat-cloak dripping moisture.
“Captain, sir, I beg to report.…”
“Look who’s come calling, Mister Lewrie!” Rodgers boomed out.
“Hallo, Son,” Lewrie said, rising from his chair.
“Ha … hallo, Father,” Sewallis managed to say, his eyes as blared in surprise as a first-saddled colt.
CHAPTER FOUR
Sewallis was certainly surprised, but so was his father. At their last supper at the George Inn in the Spring of 1803, as Lewrie had been fitting out Reliant, Sewallis had just turned sixteen, and had been dressed in his usual dark and sombre style; well-tailored and neat, with his hair brushed and combed in close order, and his complexion had been the sort sported by those who lived mostly indoors, in libraries and schoolrooms. Now, he looked …
He looks like the poorest Mid ever born, Lewrie told himself.
His errant eldest son’s uniform looked as if it had been plucked from a discard pile, or off the used rack, and had not been made from the best broadcloth to begin with. His white waist-coat and breeches were streaked with tar and slush stains. He’d done some growing, too, for his wrists showed below his coat cuffs, and the knee-buttons of his breeches were undone so his longer legs could bend without popping them off. Plain white cotton stockings, clunky and cracked shoes with dull pewter buckles, a linen shirt that was going pale tan …
Boy always was tight with his money, Lewrie thought for an awkward moment, groping for a way to begin.
“Well, lad … how d’ye keep?” Lewrie said at last, stepping up to shake his son’s free hand.
“Main-well, Father … sir,” Sewallis replied with only a faint smile on his face, as if unsure that one was allowed.
“It’s good t’see ye alive and well, I’m bound,” Lewrie went on. He went so far as to embrace him in a brief hug, and clap him on the back. “Christ, though, I’d’ve thought Captain Rodgers’d feed ye more victuals. Buyin’ ‘millers’ from the bread-room, are you, t’make ends meet?”
“The Captain feeds us quite well,” Sewallis replied, grinning. “I’ve tasted bread-room rat, but I’m not partial.”
“I’d just promised your captain a grand shore supper, and I intended t’sport you to one, too, but … you look in more need of one, first,” Lewrie declared. “And a spell at a good tailor’s, to boot,” he added, stepping back to give his son a head-to-toe examination. “The wear-and-tear o’ blockade duty’s not done your kit any good.”
“I … I did not imagine that continual sea-duty would require grand rig, sir … Father,” Sewallis flummoxed. “We’ve seen no need of silk shirts and such … no port calls.”
Didn’t know he could dissemble, or dance round the truth, quite so well, either, Lewrie thought; He can’t claim that I kitted him out so poorly, or that he did it on his own.
“Told ye that ye needed better,” Lewrie lied to help him out. “The lad looks like Death’s-Head-on-a-Mopstick, hey, sir?” he asked as he turned to grin at Rodgers. “Ehm, I wonder if there was somewhere we could, ah…”
“Well…,” Benjamin Rodgers said, considering the matter. His great-cabins were his, not to be usurped, even by an old friend.
“No matter, we’ll go on deck,” Lewrie offered. “I won’t keep him from his duties long.”
“You’ll dine aboard with me, Alan?” Rodgers asked.
“My own cook’d be heart-broken if I let his efforts spoil,” Lewrie said, declining, “and, you’re short of champagne. Let me dine you out tomorrow afternoon, then I’ll be glad to accept your invitation. Once your stores are replenished, hey?” he added with a wink.
“Most suitable,” Rodgers agreed.
“Shall we go get snowed on?” Lewrie bade Sewallis.
* * *
The most exposed place to the raw weather was atop Rodgers’s great-cabins, on the poop deck aft of the mizen mast trunk; it would also be the last place Aeneas’s crew would be found at that hour.
“What in the world got into your head, lad?” Lewrie demanded. “Damme, don’t ye know the penalty for uttering a forgery? They hang people for it! Had ye been discovered, you’d have sunk your brother’s repute in the Navy, along with yours. Lied to your captain, lied to Admiralty … a legal document, your—!”
“So, you’ve come to snatch me back, is that it, Father?” Sewallis interrupted, looking pinch-faced and miserable.
Lewrie glared at him, locking eyes with his son for a long bit. Sewallis must have gained some gumption in the Fleet, for the longer his father frowned, the firmer and more determined the son’s face became.
“No,” Lewrie relented, after another long moment. “It’s much too late for that. If I dragged you ashore by your ears, it would all come out, and you’d be in the ‘quag’ up to your neck. You could pass it off as a lark, back at your school, but … I doubt the authorities would think so. ‘Least said, soonest mended’. Or, as your granther says, ‘you’ve made your bed, and now must lie in it’.”
Sewallis did not say his thanks aloud, but his countenance brightened, and he nodded his head as he took in and released a long breath.
“Why the Devil did you do it?” Lewrie asked. “The one letter ye wrote me never explained.”
“For Mother,” Sewallis baldly stated. “I told you why I wished to serve, at that last supper we all had, the night before you sent Hugh aboard his ship. The Navy, the Army, in a line regiment or the Yeomanry
militia. For a bit, I even considered finding a recruiting sergeant’s party, and going as a volunteer … or signing aboard for the first ship that would have me.”
“Oh, for God’s sake!” Lewrie blurted. “As a bloody soldier? Or a Landsman lubber? Were ye completely daft?”
Even my father wasn’t that cruel t’me.… I went to sea as a Midshipman! Lewrie recalled his “pressing” into the Fleet in 1780, so his grandmother Lewrie’s expected inheritance could be used to pay off Sir Hugo’s creditors, with him thousands of miles away and unknowing.
“I told you all, I wished to avenge Mother’s murder. I wanted to fight the French and make them pay,” Sewallis said with some heat.
“And, have you, so far?” Lewrie skeptically asked.
“Well, not so far,” Sewallis admitted with a shrug and a shy grin. “The cowards sit at anchor in Brest, and won’t come out to face us. Do they assemble in the outer road, we stand in within sight and they slink back to the inner, letting a good slant of wind go to waste. Then the Westerly gales come, and we have to stand off windward.”
He talks like a sailor, at least, Lewrie considered.
“Are you disappointed by life in the orlop cockpit?” he asked his eldest, as they paced from the taffrail lanthorns to the railings and ladders that led down to the quarterdeck and back.
“It’s much like school, really,” Sewallis told him, opening up, now that he was sure that he would not be exposed as a forger and sent ashore as a fraud. He even sounded “chirpy” and amused. “I was John New-come, but I’ve been that before. I’ve learned to shrug off all the japes, or find ways to get my own back, d’ye see, sir. I paid heed to the cautions you told Hugh, to ready him for sea, so…” He heaved off a shrug and another brief smile. “Like any dormitory, there will be dullards, clever ones, spiteful ones, bullies, and victims. I get by.”
That don’t sound rosy, Lewrie thought, frowning to imagine that Sewallis was too mild-mannered and reticent to stand up for himself.
“Any real problems? Anyone who gives ye special grief?”
“We have made our accommodations,” Sewallis cryptically replied, returning to his usually grave self. “Call it a truce, if you will, sir. There’s only the one—I name no names—but, he is beastly to one and all, to the ship’s people as well, and the Captain has his eyes upon him. He’s failed two Post-Captains’ Boards already, so he may not be long in the Navy,” Sewallis said with a wink.
“That, or the oldest Mid going,” Lewrie replied with a laugh. “I’ve met a man, fourty or more years old, and still a Midshipman. Stood your ground … faced him down, did ye?” Lewrie asked.
“Something like that, aye sir,” his son said, rather proudly.
“Damn my eyes, Sewallis,” Lewrie said with a sigh, coming to a stop in the back-and-forth stroll. “When my father wrote and told me you’d run away to sea, I didn’t think you’d be up to it. You always struck me more suited to the Law or something suitable for the eldest son, and the heir to whatever I leave. I didn’t want this for you. A second son, like your brother, Hugh, aye, but that’s what he’s always wanted. I thought you’d be happier ashore, in your books, or…”
“I know, sir,” Sewallis glumly agreed. “I’ve known for a long time that I’m not as … rambunctious as Hugh. Not as suited to be like you. That you never quite knew what to do with me, when you were back from the sea, and…”
“Damme, d’ye think I loved ye less than your brother?” Lewrie exclaimed, aghast that Sewallis felt that way; aghast, too, to confess that sometimes, yes, he had. Hugh had been so much “all boy” that he had been so much easier to understand, and to relate to.
Sewallis said nothing to that; he just stood erect, shivering in the cold snow, and frowning.
“Hell if I did, Hell if I do, son!” Lewrie declared, flinging his arms round his eldest and pulling him close. “I love both of you, and I’m proud of both of you. I can’t say that I understand you, now and again, or approve of ev’rything you do.”
He stepped back, still gripping Sewallis by his upper arms.
“No father wants t’hear his children’ve gone and done something daft, Sewallis. Knowin’ how hard life at sea is, d’ye think I wished both my boys t’be at risk? D’ye think I don’t worry and fret over all that could harm either of you? When you see your first horse to the gallop, you went off to your first school…!”
“Thank you, Father,” Sewallis said at last, looking happy and relieved. “Thank you for that. I can stay aboard?”
“Benjamin Rodgers thinks you’re shapin’ well, and I trust his judgement, so, aye. You’re on your own bottom. And when he gives ye leave t’come ashore with me for a day, you’ll come back aboard much better dressed. We can’t let ye continue on so ‘rag-tag-and-bobtail’.”
“I must admit I look forward to a larger coat,” Sewallis said with an outright laugh.
“Let you stuff yourself at the George Inn, again, and fill up your sea-chest with goodies, too,” Lewrie promised. “Have scones and tea, or a huge breakfast before, with me and … uhm. With Mistress Stangbourne.”
“With whom, sir?” Sewallis asked, checking his pace.
“Lady I met in London last Spring, at the palace when I was presented to the King and got knighted,” Lewrie said, though he winced to have blabbed her existence. “Sister of Viscount Percy Stangbourne, and quite nice. I’d saved Lord Percy’s intended aboard one of the ships in that convoy in the South Atlantic, years ago, when I had Proteus, and we took the L’Uranie frigate. Didn’t know either of ’em from Adam, but … up they popped at the levee, and…”
Damme, how much o’ that can ye tell, without mentionin’ that Eudoxia Durschenko, the circus, and how she made cow’s-eyes at me? Lewrie thought. That part of his life was terra incognita to his children … so far. They might even still believe that he had been a faithful husband to their late mother!
“They reside here in Portsmouth?” Sewallis queried.
“Uh, no. Their country seat’s near Reading and Henley,” Lewrie tried to breeze off, “but they have a grand house in Grosvenor Street. You’d like Percy. He raised a cavalry regiment, all on his own, and got it taken onto Army List last Summer, and posted to the Kent coast. Damned fine horseman, it goes without sayin’ … her, too. Huntin’ and steeple-chasin’ … God only knows how many acres they own, or where.” Stop babblin’! he silently chid himself.
“You are seeing her, sir?” Sewallis asked, looking stricken.
“We’ve become friends,” Lewrie cautiously allowed.
“Oh. I see,” Sewallis replied. “It has been three years, now, since Mother … even so…”
“I’d not wish t’hide her under a bushel basket, but … if you don’t care to, we won’t.”
“Well, ehm … I’d…” Sewallis said, groping to express his true feelings. After another deep, pent breath, he, very gravely, added, “This comes as most surprising, sir. Had you written about her … the lady’s existence … first, to prepare the ground, as it were?”
“It’s still early days, and ’til lately, there wasn’t much to write about,” Lewrie lied, a bit rankled that one of his sons would even think to dictate his personal life, or enforce the lack of one. “Perhaps a brief hour over tea? After we’ve had you at a tailor shop, of course. Can’t have the heir of a Knight and Baronet showin’ up in rags, now can we?”
“No, sir, I suppose not,” Sewallis answered. “If you wish, then I would be pleased to meet your Mistress Stangbourne.”
No, you bloody aren’t! Lewrie scoffed to himself.
“Fine, then,” he said, instead. “Damme, but there’s a tale to amuse ye, the how of gettin’ a title t’boot.”
“I look forward to hearing it, sir,” Sewallis replied, seemingly in better takings.
“Damme, but it’s cold up here! Do I keep you any longer, after all your boat-work in this foul weather, you’ll catch your death. And I should be going back aboard Reliant, anyway. Thaw yourself out in the fug of yo
ur Midshipmen’s cockpit. Your fellow Mids’ll have a bowl of hot punch, surely.”
“I expect so, sir … Father,” Sewallis said, grinning at last. “And, in port at least, Captain Rodgers allows us the use of a Franklin stove. For a few hours each day.”
“Oh, don’t get me started on bloody Franklin stoves!” Lewrie cried. “There’s another long, sad tale that ended up costin’ me dear! Well, then, ’til I make arrangements with Captain Rodgers for a shore liberty for ye, I’ll take my leave.”
“’Til then, Father … sir,” Sewallis said, doffing his hat in a formal salute, with a slight bow from the waist.
Lewrie doffed his own cocked hat to his son, as well, a grave exchange from one naval officer to another.
Even if Lewrie still thought his son had made a bad decision, one that he might come to regret.
CHAPTER FIVE
The “hour over tea” with Sewallis, Lewrie, and Lydia had become a late second breakfast that had lasted a bit longer than two hours. Not that it could be described as a resounding success, for Sewallis had had his “grave face” on, like a wary investor offered a “fail-safe” stock. He’d been polite, and had seemed to thaw when Lydia had shown interest in his seafaring life, so far, but the wheels had come off when Lydia had ventured into talk of her brother, and his engagement to a “circus person,” Eudoxia Durschenko.
“You saw her, Sewallis, when we all attended Daniel Wigmore’s circus,” Lewrie had breezily reminded him. “Met her face-to-face when they paraded through Portsmouth, too. Eudoxia rode her white stallion right up to us, remember?”
“Oh, that was she, sir?” Sewallis had said, “Rather racily and scantily clad.” He’d been purse-lipped and dis-approving of that.
“She is fearless, I’ve come to learn,” Lydia had chimed in, “and a crack shot. When Percy brought her up to the country in the fall, we all went birding, and she out-shot me every time. Quite sweet, too.”
“You … hunt, ma’am?” Sewallis had all but gasped, though he’d kept his tone level. He’d dis-approved of women with guns, too.
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