"Neat li'l place, an't it, Pat?" Desmond asked his mate.
"Fair-clean'un, too, Liam," Furfy replied, spreading his arms and expanding his chest to inhale deeply. "Nothin' like th' reeks o' London. Smells… farm-y… "
"A bit like our auld Maynooth, hey?" Desmond said with a grin.
"Smells ale-y," Furfy decided.
"Ale, aye," Lewrie announced. "Ale for all, 'fore we go on to the house."
Spiteful as Caroline's most-like t'be, I might as well go home foxed, Lewrie decided; it mayn't matter, one way'r t'other.
The Ole Ploughman was ancient, a public house since the days of the Norman Conquest, some speculated. Its interior walls were whitewashed over rough plaster, the few windows Tudorish diamond paned, and the ceiling was low, the overhead beams black with kitchen, fireplace, candle, oil-lanthorn, or pipe smoke.
Or so it had been. During his long absence, old Mr. Beakman and his spinster daughter had added fair approximations of Jacobean Fold wood wainscot panelling. The walls were now painted a cheery red, and the beams, and the barman's counter, looked to be sanded down to fresh, raw wood, then linseeded and polished to a warm honey-brown. Beakman had gone with the times and had set aside a dining area round the fireplace on the right-hand half of the vast room, with new tables covered by pale tan cloths, whilst the left-hand half had been re-arranged to accommodate drinkers and smokers round the other fireplace, with double doors leading out to the trellised and pergolaed side garden, which was no longer a scraggly attempt at lawn, but brick-paved and railed in by low picket fences.
There were brass spitoons for those who chewed their quids, and even more brass candleholders along the walls, and brass lanthorns hung from the overhead beams, making the public house much brighter, warmer, and more welcoming a place than ever it had been before.
"My stars," Lewrie breathed as he shrugged out of his cloak and hat, noting the framed pictures hung on the walls, too; old pastorals and race horses, prize bulls and boars, and hunting scenes featuring packs of dogs gathered round mounted riders. "Who did all this?"
"Will ye look at 'im! Cap'm Lewrie t'th' life!" a woman cried from behind the long bar counter, past the customers bellied up to it. "Will, come see who's come home!"
"Maggie Cony?" Lewrie exclaimed, recognising the round-faced local lass who'd married his old Bosun, Will Cony. She'd thickened and gone "apple dumpling cheeked" but she was still the good-hearted and hardworking woman he remembered when both she and Cony had been in his employ 'tween the wars. "You work here now?"
"Tosh, Cap'm Lewrie, we own the place now!" Maggie said, wiping her red-raw hands on a bar towel and coming round to greet him.
"Old Beakman sold up?" Lewrie asked, puzzled, as he made her a showy "leg" and bow. Maggie dropped him a curtsy.
"La, 'e wuz gettin' on in years, an' not but 'is daughter t'inherit, an' 'er still a spinster, so, once Will paid off from 'is last ship, with all 'is pay an' prize-money, we made an offer an'-"
"Cap'm Lewrie, sir! Welcome 'ome, by yer leave, sir, why I've not clapped glims on ya in ages an' amen!" Will Cony said with glee as he emerged from the back kitchens. The tow-headed, thatch-haired lad he'd been had thickened considerably, too, and his forehead had grown higher, his top-hair thinned considerably, though still drawn back in a sailor's queue.
"Will Cony! My man! Damme, but ye look hellish-prosperous in a blue apron!" Lewrie told him, stepping forward to shake his hand. "When did ye-"
"Last year, sir," Cony told him, pumping away at his "paw" like a well-handle. "After I'd healed up an' got my Discharge." He stomped his right foot on the clean new floorboards, making a loud sound. "Th' Dons went an' shot me foot clean off, sir, but after a spell in Greenwich Hospital, they fitted me with a knee-boot an' an oak foot, and I 'peg' round as good as ever. Ya come for th' good old winter ale, I'd wager, Cap'm? Yer first taste o' 'ome, not a minute back, and ya come t'th' Olde Ploughman, an' bless ya for it."
"Ale for all my party, Will, and right-welcome it'll be, aye," Lewrie agreed, introducing Cony to Desmond and Furfy, explaining how they'd been with him all through HMS Proteus's commission, then Savage, and lastly Thermopylae.
"Beakman's daughter, ehm…?" Lewrie had to ask, for before Will had wed Maggie, he'd spooned round the mort (not all that bad-looking a Wench, really) and though no promises were made, no gifts exchanged to plight a throth-"I give my love a paper of pins, and in this way our love begins"-wasn't this new arrangement prickly?
Happily, Spinster Beakman had found herself a husband at last, a widower with two children, a fellow of middle years hired on by the squire, Sir Romney Embleton, as both a surgeon for the inevitable accidental injuries on his estate, and as a dispensing apothecary in his off-hours. Both the brick-works and the tannery used this new-come Mr. Archer's services, sending their sick and hurt to him with coloured paper chits which required him to treat or dose them for free, though both establishments paid him an annual retainer, as did Sir Romney.
"They've one o' them new cottages, east near the brick-works," Will Cony told them, "an' ol' Beakman's set up proper by their fire in his old age, thank th' Lord… though he does tramp in 'ere when th' weather's good, fer th' newspapers, th' ale, an' th' ploughman's dinner." That would have been an apple, a slab of cheese, a pint of beer, and perhaps a hunk of bread; a fixture on every rural tavern's chalked menu board the whole nation over. "Fall off yer 'orse, Cap'm Lewrie, an' Mister Archer'll fix ye right up, no matter 'ow many bones that ye break!"
After the better part of an hour spent in pleasant nattering, it was time to get on. The day was drawing to a close, the sun was lowering, the temperature was dropping, and damned if it didn't smell like there might be more snow in the offing. The hired coach-and-four could put themselves up at the livery stables for the night (at Lewrie's expense), but it would take longer to unload the dray waggon of all of his goods, and most-like the waggoner and his beasts would have to put up in Lewrie's barns for the night… and he'd have to feed the man, to boot.
The little convoy clattered on westwards, past the much finer Red Swan Inn, then took the turning for the Chiddingfold road. A half mile onwards, in the vale 'tween two rolling ridges, and there was the drive that led to both Chiswick and Lewrie properties; over a wooden bridge that spanned a narrow, shallow creek rippling over rocks, half covered with skims of ice and now filled with fallen limbs and twigs. Just past the bridge there was a fork; the muddy, unkempt track to the left was Uncle Phineas Chiswick's-a man so miserly that gravel and proper up-keep was too dear. Lewrie's drive lay to the right. There was a muddy patch at its beginning, but beyond that, as the drive ascended the low ridge, it was properly gravelled, almost two coaches in width (quite unlike Phineas Chiswick's, which was barely wide enough for one!) and lined by trees; trees that had grown in height and thickness since Lewrie had last seen them. At present they were bare, but in Spring, they'd be delightful, and provide both shade and a sense that the drive would lead to a welcoming establishment, with nesting birds twittering and flitting about their hatchlings.
And there was Lewrie's house, at last. It was of grey brick and stone, with a Palladian entrance faзade, set back from a circular gravel drive and large, round formal flower bed, now bedraggled and not much to look at, unless one appreciated bare brown stalks and weeds. Lanthorns either side of the entrance and stoop and a single lanthorn by the edge of the flower bed gleamed off the shiny royal blue paint of the door and the large brass Venetian lion door-knocker that Lewrie had fetched back from the Adriatic in '96. Despite the cold, drapes were pulled back in the first-storey windows to display candles, and Christmas wreaths of red-berried holly, ivy, and pine. All three of the fireplaces, and the kitchen chimney at the rear of the house, were fuming as chearly as convivial pipe smokers in a very friendly tavern or coffee-house. Everything said "come in, be welcome," yet…
Agamemnon thought Clytemnestra'd be glad t'see him, too, Lewrie sourly told himself as he alit on his own land for the first time in years
; wonder if I should tell Cassandra t'wait in the carriage, like he did. And it came to him, a most apt snatch of classical Greek play that he'd stumbled over in his school-days, from Agamemnon, in point of fact:
It is evil and a thing of terror when a wife
sits in the house forlorn with no man by, and hears
rumours that like a fever die to break again.
CHAPTER NINE
He thought it good policy to knock, not just barge in. It took a long two minutes, though, before anyone responded to the rapping of his doorknocker. A sour-looking older woman in a sack gown and mob cap opened the door, looked him up and down as she might inspect a drunken, reeling house-breaker, and in a pinched-nostriled and pursed-lipped impatient way, haughtily enquired, "Yes? And what is it that you want of this house, sir?"
"I live here…… It's mine" Lewrie snarled back. "Step lively and tell Mistress Lewrie that Captain Lewrie's home," he said, walking past the mort, swirling off his boat-cloak, and sailing his gilt-laced cocked hat at the hall tree. "Now?" Lewrie prompted the woman who was balking in prim outrage. "Devil take it… hulloa, the house!" Lewrie bellowed in his best quarterdeck voice. "Anyone to home?" He barely had time to take in the black-and-white chequered marble of his foyer, the family portraits on the walls, the twin Venetian bombй chests at either side of the staircase, before chaos befell him.
First, bugling in alarm, came a setter belonging to his elder son, Sewal-lis, closely escorted by a fluffy, yapping ball of fur he thought was a Pomeranian, with his younger son, Hugh, galloping down the stairs and squealing in eleven-year-old glee, whooping like a Red Indian!
"You're home, oh, you're home!" Hugh cried, all but tackling his papa. "Home for Christmas, huzzah!"
With Sewallis, ever a much more staid lad, now fourteen, came a second setter, sniffing arseholes with the first and circling about the reunion in a quandary whether to defend the house or go into paroxysms of delight. The fluff-ball, the Pomeranian, had no doubts about the matter; he would continue to yap, growl, and go for the boots of the intruder… once he'd worked up the nerve.
"Sewallis, give us a kiss, lad," Lewrie bade, arms outstretched to give his eldest a warm hug. "Best Christmas ever, ain't it? All of us home, for once? Damme, but ye've grown! You, too, Hugh. Two fine young gentlemen, ye've turned out t'be."
"What did you bring us for Christmas, father?" Hugh asked with an impish look.
"Me… peace… and a waggon-load o' presents," Lewrie assured him. "Where's Charlotte? Where's my little Charlotte, hey? And, can someone shut this wee hair-ball up?" he added as the Pomeranian at last worked up enough nerve to nip at his left boot, and get shoved by a swift leg thrust.
Just in time for his daughter to appear on the landing and let out an outraged squeal of alarm to see her beloved lap-yapper be assailed. She came dashing downstairs to scoop the little dog up in her arms, quickly step back a few paces, and glare accusingly.
"Charlotte, there ye are, darlin'," Lewrie said. "Won't ya come and give your papa a welcomin' kiss?"
"You hurt my dog!" she cried, cradling it like a baby; a madly barking, squirming, bloodthirsty little baby yearning for his throat.
"I never, dearest, he was…," Lewrie objected, then quieted as his wife descended the stairs, seemingly in no great hurry to welcome her husband back from the wars, and the sea. "Caroline," he said in a much soberer taking. "I'm home for Christmas."
"For so we see, my dear," Caroline coolly responded, both arms folded across her chest. "Your only letter did not inform us of just when you'd appear. When your affairs in London would be done."
That citron-sour housekeeper came down the stairs to stand near her mistress, still scowling as fierce as a Master-At-Arms might at a defaulter due at Captain's Mast for his fifth Drunk on Watch.
Ouch! Lewrie thought, striving manful not to wince at the chill.
"Your timing is impeccable, though," Caroline continued, with a tad of relenting welcome. "Supper will be ready in an hour."
Desmond and Furfy came bustling in at that awkward moment, hands full of sea-bags and carpet satchels; the waggoner followed with a sea-chest, and the dogs went silly once more.
"Uhm… this is my man, Liam Desmond, Caroline… children," Lewrie told them, "My Cox'n since we fought the L'Uranie frigate in the South Atlantic. His mate, Patrick Furfy, who'll be tending to the horses and such… He's a way with animals… "
Sure enough, Furfy did, for right after he'd dropped his burden he whistled and clapped his hands, and the two setters trotted to him, tails a'wag, tongues lolling, and their hind-quarters squirming in joy as he cosseted them with soft words, pets, and crooning Irish phrases.
"We've a stableman already, husband, so…," Caroline began.
"Then we've another, dear," Lewrie baldly told her.
"Oh, very well," Caroline resignedly replied, stiffening a bit. "Mistress Calder, pray show Captain Lewrie's men to his chambers."
"Yes, Missuz," the older mort said, her mouth rat-trapping.
"We've the dray to unload, as well," Lewrie said.
"Then pray do so through the kitchen doors, and do not let any more heat out through the front," Caroline instructed.
"I'll pay the coachee and have the waggon shifted," Lewrie said, hiding a sigh. "Quite a lot of dainties… liqueurs, caviar t'stow in the pantry?" he tempted her, hoping for some enthusiasm.
"Mistress Calder will show them where to put things," Caroline said, turning to head "aft" for the kitchens herself.
"The waggoner'll stay over for the night," Lewrie told her.
"I'll tell cook to lay three more places in the scullery," she announced, then turned and departed with nary a hug, a kiss, or even a a promise of one.
Petronius had it right, Lewrie sadly thought, recalling another snatch of Latin poetry: "Reproach and Love, all in a moment, For Hercules himself would be a Torment!"
An hour later and it was time for supper. Lewrie had hung his uniforms and civilian suitings in the armoire, stowed his shirts and such in a chest-of-drawers, and had made a fair start on emptying his heavy sea-chest… in a guest bed-chamber at the end of the upstairs hall right above his library and office. He'd borne his swords down to that office-library, just in time to witness Mrs. Calder remove the last of the linen covers from wing chairs and settee, and stoke up the fireplace… as if in his absence, the only thing used there was the desk and the leather-padded chair behind it, for farm accounting. Desmond followed him in with his weapons; his breech-loading Ferguson rifle-musket, the long-barrelled fusil musket, the rare Girandoni air-powered rifle, twin to the one that had almost killed him at Barataria Bay in Spanish Louisiana, and his boxed pistols.
From the stairs onwards, his children had followed him as close at his heels as Sewallis's setters, the boys goggling at the firearms and swords. Lewrie hung his French grenadier-pattern hanger above the mantel and stood his hundred-guinea presentation small-sword in a wooden rack, along with five more small-swords of varying worth and quality that he'd captured from the French.
"Ehm… are not surrendered swords handed back to the owners?" Sewallis hesitantly asked, tentatively fingering each one.
"They usually are, Sewallis," Lewrie told him with a grin, "but that's hard t'do if they're no longer among the living. That fancy'un there, that was L'Uranie's captain's sword, but he was dead by the time we boarded and took her. A couple of them belonged to Frog Lieutenants, who perished, too. None of the French prisoners would be in a position t'take 'em home to their next of kin… on parole here in England, or refused, and ended in the hulks, so I kept them. Got the dead men's names jotted down, and stuck the notes in the scabbards, so I s'pose I could forward 'em t'Paris someday soon. No time for that, not as long as the war was still on. Don't play with 'em, Hugh. They aren't toy swords. Neither are any of these fire-locks."
"Sir Hugo lets us, when he's down from London," Hugh objected. "He lets us shoot, for real! And he's taught us some fencing, too. Said we should take classes f
rom a fencing master."
"Then we'll give that Girandoni air-rifle a try, once the holidays are over," Lewrie promised, taking a welcome seat in a wing chair before the blazing fire, and motioning the boys to sit on the settee. "Mind, it's not a toy, either, but… if my father allows you use of muskets and pistols already, I think we could have some fun with it. It's very good for silent huntin'."
Charlotte had trailed him round the house, too, though silent as a dormouse, lugging her lap dog, by name of Dolly, as if restraining the little beast from attacking him. Now she was seated in the wing chair opposite Lewrie's, legs sticking out and the dog in her lap, so it could glare and bare its teeth in comfort. Three setters-Dear God, how many are there? Lewrie asked himself-were sprawled before the hearth, and his cats were in the room as well. Toulon and Chalky were quite used to "ruling the roost," furry masters of both great-cabins and quarterdeck, but the big, slobbery setters' antics and curiosity had driven them to the mantel top-even Toulon, who was not all that agile-where they now lay slit-eyed, tail-tips now and then quivering, and folded into great, hairy plum puddings.
"Uhm… how long've ye had the pup, Charlotte?" Lewrie asked.
"Last Christmas," his nine-year-old daughter answered. "Uncle Governour and Aunt Millicent brought her from London."
"Takes a lot o' brushin', I'd imagine," Lewrie observed askance.
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