Wyndham began thrusting low with feint thrusts, stamping to distract Lewrie's attention, or throw off his timing, forcing him back as their blades rang in engagement and light parries. Lewrie gave ground half-step for half-step to maintain distance before shifting to a low guard and point-parrying Wyndham wider and wider. The soldier wanted to step back and regain his advantage, so he ended with his blade at high first, and whirled it suddenly in a killing swing that Lewrie met with a crossover to fourth. The two blades met with a great clang and the shock stunned his arm and hand, but Lewrie cut across, his own blade ringing off Wyndham's hilt guard, which lowered the army man's weapon below his waist. Lewrie feinted a cut to the head backhanded, which made him duck back off-balance. Lewrie drew his elbows back and disengaged, then whirled his cutlass under and around to spin Wyndham's guard over his head. He then struck down the blade, to lay the heavy cutlass on Wyndham's scalp with a firm tap that cut through hair and skin and thudded off the bone. The infantryman tried to bind, but Lewrie shoved forward with his hilt and pushed hard, jumping back at the same time from the irate killing swing that followed.
There were murmurs of alarm or pleasure from the witnesses as they saw the blood on Wyndham's head and face running down into his eyes. Humiliated, Wyndham was on the attack at once, taking the hint of their brief practice and using the point less, wielding the cutlass more like one would a hanger to attack edge to edge. Lewrie gave ground, seeing the energy Wyndham was putting into his efforts, and knowing that sooner or later the man would go back to the pointwork he was used to, once he began to flag.
Wyndham began to execute flying cut-overs fairly well, which Alan was parrying off, but he suddenly went back to the point and faked Alan out badly. The straight-armed lunge grazed his left cheek with steel, and he felt a sudden pain in his face. But he responded with a counterthrust under that made Wyndham hop to save his nutmegs, then an upward parry and a rapid double, which forced Wyndham to leap back once more. Lewrie took a long pace forward to attack, changing tactics to the full naval cutlass drill-stamp, slash, balance and return, slash-right and left, up and down, whirling the heavy blade in a whistling arc that brought grunts of effort from Wyndham each time he parried, the blades smashing together with the hefty clang of a farrier making a new horseshoe. Lewrie added flying cut-overs to break the pace, going from high to low before making a swing with his wrist that almost put his point into the army man's chest. Wyndham's parry was weak, and he almost dragged himself backward to escape, his chest heaving. Lewrie thought it a trick, but was not sure. He himself was tired… God, he was aching, his wrist and his arms heavy as lead, and his legs juddering props that threatened to go slack at any second and drop him to the ground. But Wyndham did look finished. His body was streaming sweat, thinning the blood that ran down his face and coating it with claret. And his eyes that had been so mocking and so sure were now squinted with concern and doubt. He was tempted to leap forward and finish it but remembered Captain Osmonde's advice to go slow and wear him down.
They met again, blades still ringing, but softer now. Wyndham thrust low, using the point to come up with a ripping slash at Lewrie's stomach, but he beat it aside at the last instant, driving Wyndham's guard low, met the next blow wi1b a two-handed swing that forced Wyndham's blade wide to the left and almost into the sand. Lewrie stepped forward into his guard sideways and swung back to the right two-handed again with all his flagging might. He felt a thud like sinking an axe into a chopping block, and leaped back, centering his guard against a reply. But it was over.
Wyndham stood before him with his feet together, his face as white as his snowy breeches. They both looked down at the sand to see Lieutenant Wyndham's right arm lying there, still clutching the cutlass and the nerveless fingers curling and drumming an irregular tatoo on the hilt! Wyndham looked back to him in surprise, before his eyes rolled back into his head and he pitched forward to the sand, a fountain of blood gushing from what remained of his shoulder with each beat of his heart.
Lewrie stumbled backward, unable to feature it, the tip of his blade dragging a furrow through the sand. Ashburn came up to him and he dropped his cutlass and turned away from him. Wyndham's party came forward, and both surgeons worked on the infantry officer, cauterizing a great cut in Wyndham's side, and hands slipped in gore as they tried to seize the spurting arteries and sear them shut, while the seabirds cried and wheeled at the smell of blood steaming on the beach.
Lewrie sat down on the step of his coach, watching the drama below. The naval coachee gave him a large glass of brandy to drink. ’Gawd almighty, sir.. ‘. ’Indeed." Alan nodded in shock. "Another please.’
This brandy he sipped more slowly, becoming aware of how sore he was allover after being so tensed up for God knew how long, how his arms arched and throbbed, and the pain pulsed in his ravaged cheek. His thigh muscles were jumping and his calves and ankles hurt as though he had strolled twenty miles across country.
Captain Osmonde climbed up the sand slope from the beach to him. "I believe you shall make a dangerous man, after all, Mister Lewrie.’
’I meant but to cut him…" Lewrie dazedly protested. ’I believe you should consider that intent most successful," the Marine officer said most dryly. ’Will he live?’
‘Lieutenant Warren Wyndham is now late of His Majesty's 12th Regiment of Foot," Osmonde said. "Totally exsanguined of his life's blood and dead on the field of… honor. Was it worth it?’
‘At the moment, aye, sir," Lewrie said, studying his shoes. "I don't know about tomolTow.’
’An honest answer, at any rate," Osmonde said, kneeling down in front of him. "Don't develop a taste for this, boy. War is gloriously obscene enough, without turning into a man-killer.’
’I want no more of it," Alan confessed. ’Best have the surgeon sew that up," Osmonde said, toucbing his cheek to examine his wound. "Won't spoil your looks for the ladies, I doubt. Hungry?’
‘Yes," Alan realized. ’Ashburn had the good faith in you to reserve rooms for us for a late breakfast at an inn on the way back. I, for one, am famished.’
’There's one good that will come out of this," Lewrie said as he got to his feet at the approach of the surgeon with his bag. "There is no way they'll keep me as a messenger and elTand boy ashore after this. If I'm not at sea within a week, there's a dozen of good claret for you and Ashburn on it.. ‘.
Chapter 11
"You were fortunate, Mister Lewrie," Commander the Honorable Tobias Treghues said, seated behind his glossy mahogany desk in the day cabins of the 20-gun frigate Desperate. "I am told the officers of the 12th Foot detachment have talked of a syndicate to challenge you one at a time until you are bested. They were not enamored of your choice of weapons, or how you won.’
’Aye aye, sir," Lewrie said, studying his new lord and master. Treghues was in his late twenties, slim and brown-haired with grey eyes. His uniform was impeccable, as were his cabin furnishings. He showed no signs of poverty, though it had been rumored he was the eldest son of a lord gone to sea to improve the family fortunes with prizes. ’Fortunate also that I had a suitable berth, after losing one young gentleman drowned. and another to the bottle," Treghues went on. ’Aye aye, sir." When a midshipman had no better answer, that usually struck the right obedient note without committing to anything. ’You are, for your own safety, to remain aboard until we have sailed. You are not even to place foot in a rowing boat. By the time we return ITom a cruising patrol, the 12th will have gone to St. Kitts and the problem will have been resolved.’
’Aye aye, sir," Lewrie said, trying to find a new way to do it. "I do not hold with dueling," Treghues warned. "Or hotheaded bucks who cannot resist taking offense at the slightest reproach, like some swaggering Frog duke, Mister Lewrie. Usually bad officers, too.’
’I do not wish to give that impression, sir, but I had-" Treghues waved off the rest of his answer. "Spare me your innocent and honorable motives. Sir Onsley informed me as to the circumstance. He also gives you a g
lowing report, so I am aware of your services to the Crown oflate. You may be useful to this ship, but all I want to see from you is duty done in a cheerful and efficient manner. Spare us your blood-lust for the foe.’
’Aye aye, sir," Lewrie parroted himself. ’Admiral Sir George Rodney has taken over from Admiral Byron, thanks be to God, so we should see some action SooD. Hood and Rodney together, and we'll see an end to these French and Spanish combinations. So, you see what is needed. Get below and into your working rig. I allow you to forgo the waistcoat in these climes, but I expect a midshipman to 1001«. like a proper officer at all times, no matter how junior you may be. That means a regulation dirk: instead of that pretty hanger of yours. And I prefer a cocked hat to the round one. I took you on sufferance-don't give me reason to regret it.’
Lewrie nodded and left the cabins, emerging on the upper deck. Desperate had no poop but a long quarterdeck over the captain's cabin. Her first (and only) lieutenant had quarters below the captain with the surgeon, purser, Marine lieutenant and suchlike worthies. The wheel stood over the captain's cabins on the long quarterdeck. unprotected by binnacle bulwarks. The lower deck was not a gun deck at all, the artillery being sited on the upper deck where the captain lived in solitary splendor. Hands berthed forward on the lower deck. then petty officers, Marines, warrants and midshipmen, and then the offi~ cer's gun room right aft. The orlop and hold were too crammed with supplies to let anyone berth there.» "What a crosspatch he is." Lewrie sighed. From the way Treghues regarded Rodney, he must be one of his-not a good sign. Rodney was famed for incredibly bad judgement in appointments.
But the cobbing he had received could not dampen his joy to be aboard any sort of ship once more, and Desperate was magnificent. She was 110 feet on the range of the lower deck. a bit over 30 in beam, of 450 tons burthen. Piercing her upper deck bulwarks were eighteen six-pounder cannon, with two of the new eighteen-pounder carronades on her foc's'l, short guns mounted on swivelling slides that fired bursting shot to no great range-"Smashers"-he was dying to try them out.
Desperate carried Treghues, a first lieutenant named Railsford, Mr. Monk the sailing master and two mates, one bosun and mate, one warrant gunner, one gunner's mate and a yeoman of the powder room, a surgeon named Dome and a mate, five quartergunners, one carpenter and mate, one armorer, one master-at-arms, two quartermasters and mates, a yeoman of the sheets, one coxswain, four carpenter's crew, one ship's corporal, a sailmaker and one sailmaker's assistant, one captain's clerk, the young purser named Cheatham and his steward, four midshipmen, four young boy fifers and drummers, eighteen boyservants, and fifty-six men rated as either ordinary or able seamen, or landsmen. She also carried Marines; a lieutenant named Peck, one sergeant, one corporal, and thirty private soldiers.
She was a 6th Rate, the smallest type of ship-rigged frigate in the fleet, and with Lewrie joining her, was fortunate to be only six hands short of full complement.
Desperate was too light for the line of battle with her fourinch oak scantlings and beams on twenty-inch centers. She was too fast to be tied to a squadron, but also too well armed to waste on despatches like Parrot. Desperate was what was coming to be known as a "croizer"; she was a huntress on her own in the most likely places to seek out, take, or burn enemy merchantmen, privateers and light naval units.
Lewrie entered the midshipmen's berth to find his new mess mates lounging about the small compartment, sandwiched in without air by storerooms and the mate's dog boxes. The total space was about twelve-by-ten, with barely five feet of headroom between the beams. There was a polished table down the center for dining, chests for seats, and pegs for storage of handy items. ’Hullo. I'm Alan Lewrie," he said to them, reliving that scene long ago when he had reported below in Ariadne. But there was a difference; he had nearly fifteen months in the Navy, and knew what sort of drudgery and folderol to expect now. He was introduced to the others. There was Peter Carey, a gingerhaired boy of thirteen with the usual modest squirearchy background. There was a gotch-gutted sixteen-year-old pig named Francis Forrester. He was quick to point out that it was the Honorable Francis Forrester, and his elegant manners and bis drawling, superior voice made it abundantly clear that he looked on Lewrie's arrival as another mark of the reduction in tone of their mess.
Lewrie's other companion was also sixteen, a dark and merry Cornish boy that Lewrie had known slightly long before when posted to the Ariadne after it had become a receiving ship. He and David Avery had gone roaming English Harbor together, and had enjoyed each other's company, before Avery had joined an armed transport.
Alan carefully removed and folded up his fine new uniform. He packed the waistcoat away for Sunday Divisions, slipped out of his snowy breeches and dug out a ragged pair of slop trousers. He exchanged his silk stockings for cotton, wrapped his best shoes and donned a cracked pair. His worst faded and stained coat he hung up on a peg. Sadly, he packed the hanger away in his open chest and fetched out his dirk, now showing signs of wear around that "best gold-plate pommel.’
’Pretty hanger." Forrester pouted like a sow, picking it up and studying it. "But your parents should have known better. '‘
‘It was a recent gift," Alan said, meaning to get off to a fair start, if allowed. "For saving my last captain his ship. ’
‘Yess," Forrester drawled. "Avery has been regaling us with the heroism of your derring-do." He sheathed the hanger and tossed it into Lewrie's chest like a poor discard at a secondhand shop. ’Did you really kill a man in a duel?" Carey asked, wide-eyed. "Yes. Dead as cold, boiled mutton. He insulted a young lady of my acquaintance," Alan boasted, even-toned. ’Carey, we must remember to tremble before the anger of our new manslaughtering Hector," Forrester said. "Even if he is, by length of service, junior to you. How long at sea, Lewrie?’
‘A year. Fifteen months total.’
’Then I am still senior," Forrester said, pleased to hear it. "June of ' 76. ’
‘We're not lieutenants, Forrester," Avery replied. "I actually predate you by a whole month, if the truth be known. We're all equal here. ’
‘Ah, the rebellious Adamses and Thomas Paines have been after you again," Forrester said in a way that Lewrie could only think of as greasy. "Remember that I have the signals and you don't, so that makes me senior. And I trust that any new errant newlies shall remember that.’
’We had a man who said much the same thing in Ariadne," Lewrie said, taking a pew on his closed chest. "He died. ’
‘Would be having the gall to threaten me?" Forrester's piggy eyes were squinted. "Now why should I do a thing like that? I'm but stating a fact. You remember me mentioning him, don't you, Avery?’
‘Oh, you mean Mister the Honorable… what was his name?’
‘Fotheringfop," Lewrie said. "Ferdinand Fotheringfop. ’
‘Choked on his beef bones, didn't he?" Avery said. ’No, that was Mister the Honorable D' Arcy DeBloat. ’
‘And what, pray, did he die of?" Avery was playing along, to the great delight of young Carey, who was already stifling a grin. ’Fotheringfop was so elevated an individual, with such an airy opinion of himself that his head swelled one morning at dawn Quarters. We tried to save him and got a gantline to him, but he pulled the maint' gallantfhast right out of her. Last seen drifting for Panama. Crew did a little hornpipe of despair at his passing. Sad, it was." Lewrie pretended to grieve.
Forrester snorted at the foolishness and left the midshipmen's berth for the upper deck, while Carey dared to laugh out loud and Avery pronounced Lewrie a fellow that would do. ’What a fubsy, crusty thing it is," Lewrie observed of their mess mate. "What does he expect us to do, carry his scepter for him, or just be his fags?’
‘Just a puffed-up dilbelT)'." Avery shrugged. "Probably afraid we know more than him and show him up before his lord and master.’
’Fat pig," Carey said, softly. ’Carey, what were the other midshipmen like?" Lewrie asked. ’Dodds was twenty or so. But I've never seen anyone drink so much all the time. The
captain finally threw him out, said he'd never make an officer, or live long enough to take the exam.’
’Good relations to the captain?" Lewrie probed. ’I think he was a cater-cousin." Carey frowned. "The other… Montgomery, he was real smart, and nice. He was a year older than me but he knew everything. He got washed overboard in a gale last month north of St. Lucia. He was my friend." Carey sniffled.
Lewrie shared a look with Avery. They could imagine wh.t the mess had been like for Carey, with one raging sponge in his cups all the time, the brutish Forrester lording it over all tli: others, and only Montgomery to shield the younger boy. Carey gave no sign that he was a mental giant, or in any way assertive. Just a scared and homesick child, mediocre at be~ when it came to duty and too small and weak to perform like a real sailor. ’Well, there's a new order here, by God," Avery told hin, with a rap on the shoulder. "Just let the cow-arse try to push hi.
weight around.. ‘. ’Of which he has considerable," Lewrie added. ’Aye, and we'll fix him," Avery said. "Right, Lewrie?’
‘Amen to that," Lewrie intoned with mock piety. ’You can't go too far, though," Carey said. "I mean, Treghues and Forrester… they're not related, but you'd think Forrester was his brother.’
’Plays the favorite, does your captain?’
‘I shouldn't say it, but hc-’
‘A wonderful berth," Avery sighed. "And I thought that rotten armed transport was bad.’
’Hell with it." Lewrie said. "I hear she's made her people a pot of prize money, and she goes her own way looking for fame and fortune. We're in the right place. Now all we have to do is to convince our captain that we're the right midshipmen for him.’
’That shouldn't be too hard," Avery said. "Here, Lewrie, you wouldn't have a neckcloth that would pass Divisions, have you?" Just before departure, mail came aboard, and Lewrie was surprised to have two packets. Sir Hugo was actually living up to his end of the bargain and had sent him a rouleau of one hundred guineas. Well, actually, the solicitor Mr. Pilchard had sent it. There was no letter attached, and that was no disappointment, but the money was most welcome.
The King`s Coat l-1 Page 28
