King, Ship, and Sword

by Dewey Lambdin

  “I’ll re-pay you,” Lewrie told him, liking Westcott’s initiative “Well, ‘faint heart ne’er won fair ladies,’ and we’ll not reel anyone in without proper bait. Let’s go all-out and not be shy.”

  Together, they thrashed out the salient points; that Reliant, a Fifth Rate frigate, was spacious; come all loyal sea-rovers who wished action, speed and dash, and the chance of prize-money never to be had aboard a ship of the line! Prime rations, full issue of rum! Bounty to be paid—£20 for Able Seamen, £10 for Ordinary Seamen, £5 for Landsmen and Ship’s Boys! And Death to the French!

  Even in a hot Press, William Pitt’s Quota Acts of 1795 had made the counties offer more and more to fill their required numbers, and the Navy had had to follow suit, raising the Joining Bounty from the pre-war’s single Guinea, or £5 for Able Seamen, and even then, merchant service was more lucrative.

  “Let’s use my notoriety,” Lewrie decided; which resulted in the blurb that Reliant was commanded by Capt. Alan “Ram-Cat” Lewrie, Black Alan the Liberator of the West Indies, Victor of Dozens of Sea Fights & Fortunate in Prize-Money! Confusion, And Death, to the French!

  “. . . True Blue Hearts of Oak, and all who seek Glory and Adventure, ask of Lieutenant G. Westcott at the et cetera and et cetera,” he concluded. “Oh, might toss in Cape Saint Vincent, Camperdown, and Copenhagen, too. Should that do it, sirs?”

  “Topping-well, sir, indeed,” Lt. Westcott agreed. “I will seek out the printer this afternoon and have him polish it up.”

  “I’ll go ashore with you, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie announced as he got to his feet. “As you can see, I badly need new paint in this . . . boudoir, and you may fetch it back aboard as you return from the printers. Have Desmond supervise the painting. I’ll also lodge ashore for tonight, to see my son off early tomorrow, then will be back aboard by Eight Bells of the Morning Watch.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  Their last supper together at the George, though quite tasty and filling, was not without its uneasy moments. There were many Navy men and their wives dining there, and Hugh was enthralled by the sight of them, all but preening in his Midshipman’s uniform and excited about the beginning of a naval career. Sir Hugo told amusing tales about his military antics (the clean ones, it must be noted!) to raise Sewallis from his gloom and disappointed mood, when not discussing more practical matters. Lewrie mostly kept a sombre silence through their repast, knowing what Hugh was facing from his own experiences as a lowly Mid, and . . . fearing all that weather, the sea, combat, or stupid accidents could do to such an eager and callow thirteen-year-old. Would he lose a child as well as a wife? All of a sudden it struck him that once he saw the lad off in a boat to his new ship, it was good odds that they might not see each other ever again, and even if Hugh prospered, took to the Navy like a duck to water, grim Duty might demand three or four years’ separation before rencontre, and what sort of stranger might his youngest son be when they did manage to re-meet? He felt every bit of his fourty years, and wondered where so much of them had gone!

  “But why can’t I fight the French?” Sewallis was asking, fetching Lewrie from his dreads. “It’s so unfair that Hugh gets to go, and I can’t. And I want to, so very much.”

  “You’re eldest, Sewallis,” Sir Hugo gently told him. “It’s the way it is. Ancient right o’ primogeniture, ye see. The way things are done in English families.”

  “I didn’t ask to be first, it’s . . . ,” Sewallis protested; as much protest as he’d raise in such a distinguished supper crowd, and as much as his usual reticence allowed.

  “First-born sons always inherit everything, Sewallis. The others have to make their own way,” Lewrie explained. “It’s your place to be the elder to Hugh and Charlotte . . . provide for them through good management of my estate, which goes to you if I fall.”

  “If Uncle Phineas takes our house and farm, we won’t have an estate, would we?” Sewallis cleverly, though pettishly, pointed out.

  “My investments in the Funds, my savings, and your grandfather’s place, eventually, is my estate. Our estate, rather,” Lewrie told him, wondering what had gotten into him. “T’do that means ye have need of more education, and business sense, so ye don’t go squanderin’ it all, or make foolish decisions. Don’t mean ye can’t have a career of your own besides those duties . . .”

  “As much a duty t’yer family as Hugh’s duty to his service and his ship,” Sir Hugo stuck in before waving for a top-up of claret.

  “Finish at your school . . . perhaps a year or so at university,” Lewrie went on. Sir Hugo rolled his eyes heavenward to show what he thought of that, and Lewrie took a moment to shrug agreement with him. “Or ye might wish t’speak with our solicitor, Mister Mountjoy, about learnin’ more about the law. Learn the cautions. After terms, there is my barrister, Mac-Dougall, who might advise ye about entering one o’ the Inns of Court. Once you’re of an age t’live in London on your own, mind, not before.”

  “Ever given thought what ye might wish t’be, lad? What career . . . a civilian career, that is . . . ye wanted t’take up?” Sir Hugo asked him.

  “Well . . . I once thought of becoming a churchman, like our vicar at Saint George’s,” Sewallis hesitantly stated, “going up to Oxford or Cambridge, then taking Holy Orders, but . . .” He shrugged to silence.

  That idea made Sir Hugo sit up like someone had goosed him, and blare his eyes. Lewrie was forced to squint, and fight the grimace that threatened to bloom on his phyz. Sir Hugo coughed.

  “Well, and that’s an honourable profession, I’m bound,” Lewrie was quick to say, though shifting uneasily on his chair. “And there’s many a churchman the eldest of his family, with his own income, beyond the manse, the glebe, and his share of the tithes,” he pointed out.

  “But, since Mother was murdered, I only want to fight and kill Frenchmen,” Sewallis said with unaccustomed firmness. “I don’t think I could ever take Holy Orders with that in my heart. If not the Navy, could I not go into the Army, grandfather? You once offered your influence at Horse Guards to help Hugh obtain a commission.”

  “Know why they call downwind a ‘soldier’s wind,’ Sewallis? Because any fool can do it!” Hugh took that moment to interject, laughing at his own jape.

  “Don’t taunt your brother, young man!” Lewrie snapped. “It’s not the best time—you’re going, and all of us not knowing when we’ll clap eyes on each other again.” Hugh, though, was irrepressible, only pretending to be subdued. Turning back to Sewallis, Lewrie said, “First-born sons’ lives are never intentionally placed in jeopardy, me lad. Like yer grandfather just said, your familial duty is to grow up to be the heir, and carry on the family name and properties.”

  “Younger sons in the Army,” Sir Hugo added, “if there’s a title or estate and their eldest brother passes, ye know what they must do? Resign, sell off their commissions, and go back to civilian life t’take his place, take on the late elder brother’s duties to his family. Get the title, the lands and rents, and do right by his younger brothers and sisters. Seen enough of it in my time,” the old rascal grumbled. “Take their seat in Lord’s, or stand for Commons.”

  “Like Harry Embleton?” Sewallis asked. “But he’s in the Army, and he’s Sir Romney’s eldest. If the King called out the Yeomanry and the militia, he’d get to fight the French!”

  “Only if they invade us, Sewallis,” Sir Hugo said with a smirk of disapproval for that fool Harry, and the dubious worth of militia or the Yeomanry. “They’ll never be called t’go overseas to fight the French, where the French are. Harry’s just playin’ at soldierin’!”

  “Well then, couldn’t I join Harry’s regiment? At least I could get some military experience!” Sewallis cajoled. “When school term is over?”

  Lewrie wryly shook his head. It would be too embarrassing, and take much too long, to explain to Sewallis the enmity that Harry still held for anyone named Lewrie, and why, and how slim his odds were of a commission under Harry Embleton if Ha
rry ran the selection—and just how badly Sewallis would be treated if he did get such a commission!

  “Better ye enjoy what’s left o’ your youth at Dun Roman, with your grandfather, son,” Lewrie gently told him. “Coach to London with him and stay a week or so, now and again.”

  “Stay with your sister, and yer Uncle Governour and Aunt Millicent, too,” Sir Hugo was very quick to add, looking as if he’d bitten into a lemon at the suggestion that he give up his pleasurable activities to play “daddy” to the lad, not the avuncular, now-and-again “grandfather”! “Do a summer term at school?” he hastily suggested.

  “I know it’s the way it’s done, but . . . it still seems so unfair!” Sewallis mournfully said in a chin-down sulk.

  Him stay with Governour and Millicent? Lewrie thought in dread; Good God, they’ll turn him against me, too? Maybe he should go into one o’ the services ’fore I lose all my children!

  “Uhm . . . school, father,” Sewallis hesitantly said, looking up. “Headmaster said to tell you that the tuition, uhm . . .”

  “Thought I’d paid it,” Lewrie replied after a bite of juicy roast beef and a sip of wine. “Ye took my note-of-hand with you when ye returned for Easter Term.”

  “Not that one,” Sewallis told him. “There’s the extras for equitation, the swordmaster, the dancing instructor, and all. And there is a summer term. Not too many students attend, and not all of the faculty are there, but . . . I suppose I could attend, and take only a few courses. That way, I could have long weekends to visit grandfather in London now and then, and there’s an interval, round Mid-Summer Day, long enough to go home to Anglesgreen and see Charlotte and the family.”

  “Perhaps that might be best . . . this summer, at least,” Sir Hugo said after a long, head-cocked thought. “Know how much it’d be? D’ye have a list of the extra fees? I’ll foot it. My treat, hey?”

  “Thank you, grandfather,” Sewallis said to him with warmth. “If I must become half an . . . an orphan, then I suppose I must be about it as best I can, and gain more education . . . as you say, father . . . for fulfilling my lot in life.”

  Could I feel any lower? Lewrie wondered; any guiltier?

  They retired fairly early, since Hugh had to rise so early the next morning; Hugh and Sewallis to one bed, and Sir Hugo and Lewrie to another. And the old bastard snored and made strangling noises like a wheezing ox about to expire! Sending Hugh off to his own uncertain entry into a hard, cruel adult life, abandoning Sewallis to his mournful and shy loneliness, to be batted like a tennis ball between school, his begrudging grandfather, and his bitter kinfolk, was enough to keep Lewrie awake and tossing long into the night, even without his father’s snores and the occasional fart. To recall his parting with Charlotte was even worse!

  “Pah-pah, why must you go away?” she’d wept at one minute, then, “Why can’t Mistress Gower and her husband and my nanny take care of me at our house?” the next. Followed by “Must I move in with Uncle Governour and Aunt Millicent?” Followed by “Will I keep my pony, my dolls, and my own bed? My puppy?” No matter how much Millicent assured her that all her things would be with her, that she could play every day with her cousins—hadn’t it been grand, last summer, when she had stayed with them, after all? Hadn’t they had ever so much fun? Don’t you know we love you like our own?—Charlotte had been disconsolate and utterly bereft. “But that was when Ma-Ma was coming back!” she’d stubbornly objected.

  Pah-pah and Ma-Ma—that was Governour’s and Millicent’s doing. When he and Caroline had coached away, it had been Daddy and Mummy and she had been so gay, delighted to spend her time at their estate and play to her heart’s desire, visiting her grandfather’s estate daily.

  Changin’ her into their sort o’ Miss Priss! Lewrie fumed.

  Then had come the hateful vindictive, along with a fresh flood of tears and wails. “I’d still have my Ma-Ma if you hadn’t taken her off to France! I’d still have my house, the way things were, but for you!”

  She didn’t have to add “I hate you, just go away!” to wound him any deeper as she’d stomped her feet, ignored all his attempts to explain it was the French who’d taken her mother; she had shrunk from his attempt to hug her and console her, then dashed from the parlour, and the house, screaming inarticulately, with a flying banshee’s wail!

  Recalling that all over again made Lewrie start fully awake and upright in bed, to scrub his face with both hands and wish for dawn, seeing again Millicent’s stricken look and Governour’s grim satisfaction!

  Awakened at 6 A.M. to dress, scrub up, comb their hair, and (for the adults) to shave, and they were down to the dining room for breakfast, even more subdued than they had been at supper.

  “Say good-byes here, Sewallis, father,” Lewrie instructed. “Hugh and I will go on to the docks by ourselves, hey?”

  They were English, of the country gentry, so public displays of emotion were not for them. Sir Hugo chucked Hugh under the chin and told him that he was proud of him and that he should be careful and follow all his orders and remember to uphold the Lewrie name and its honour. “Yer father’s brought lustre to it, and ye can do no less.”

  “So long, Hugh,” Sewallis said, his arms folded cross his chest and his chin up. “I’ll write. You be sure to, too, right? Tell us of how you get along. You lucky imp.”

  “G’bye, Sewallis,” Hugh said in return, sticking out his hand to shake. “Give my regards to the other lads at school. Put ink in the proctor’s port, like we planned? And, when you go to grandfather’s, make sure you see to my horse now and then. Well?”

  “I’ve a cart for your dunnage,” Lewrie said. “I’ll be back in a bit. Have a bit of time before I go aboard Reliant and you coach back to London, and we can say our good-byes. Right? Ready, Hugh?”

  “Aye, sir,” Hugh replied, easily turning “nautical.”

  The carter trundled along before them as they strolled along behind, past the last of the civilian part of town to the dockyards and the warehouses, then to the docks. It was a raw day, with solid grey overcast clouds and a fitful April wind, damp and a bit chilly, strong enough to clatter halliards and blocks, and make the seabirds complain as Hugh and his father reached the stone stairs down to the boat landing.

  “One for Pegasus!” Lewrie shouted to the bargees, selecting the nearest lug-sailed boat the size of his gig, and leaving it to its two-man crew and the carter to heave Hugh’s sea-chest into it.

  “Well . . . ,” Hugh muttered, childishly shuffling his feet in his new pair of Hessian boots, eager to be away yet loath to say a real, nigh-permanent farewell.

  “God, how I hate this, Hugh!” Lewrie spat. “I know it’s what ye want, what ye were fated for, as my second son, but still . . . it hurts t’see ye off. Navy’s a damned hard life. No matter you’re in great hands with Thom Charlton, I’ll worry ’bout ye every day.”

  “I’ll be fine, father, just you see,” Hugh assured him, naïve despite all the cautions Lewrie had drummed into him. “We’ll put the French in their place.”

  “Here,” Lewrie said, reaching into his boat-cloak. “Your Navy pay as a Midshipman ain’t much, so you’ll be needin’ some extra funds. Soon as ye report to Captain Charlton, give him this t’dole out t’ye. The Midshipmen’s mess’ll always have need to whip round for luxuries. Just don’t let the others gull ye outta your money on foolishness or gamblin’. And don’t let on you’re better off than ye are, or you’ll be the one they strip, right down to your bones.” He gave him a note-of-hand and a small wash-leather purse containing ten pounds of coin. “And this.”

  From the small of his back, hooked to his own sword belt under his uniform coat, he withdrew a Midshipman’s dirk in its scabbard.

  “Wondered why I didn’t buy ye one in London? That’s because I was havin’ my old one re-gilt. Leather of the scabbard’s a bit worn, but that’d happen to a new’un, too, after a few months at sea.”

  “Your own dirk?” Hugh exclaimed, turning it over in his hands,
drawing it and waving it in the weak sunshine, his eyes agleam in joy.

  “Take good care of it, mind,” Lewrie told him, and showed him how to slip it through the white leather frog on his belt, and how to thread the clam-shell catch into the slit in the leather. “There,” he said further, satisfied that it was secure. “And when you attain your Lieutenancy, my old hanger will be yours, too.”

  “Your Napoleon hanger?” Hugh gasped. “No, Daddy . . . sir. Not that one. I’ll not wear a sword that . . . murderer touched.”

  “This’un, then,” Lewrie offered, patting the hanger that hung at his left side. “When the time comes.”

  Hugh looked relieved and nodded his beaming acceptance.

  “Well then . . . might not’ve said it often enough, but you must remember that I love you, Hugh,” Lewrie told him, wishing he could put his arms round the lad, kneel down, and give him a good squeeze. “And I am so proud of you I could bust. My regards to Thomas Charlton, and my thanks for taking you into his ship. S’pose it’s time, though,” he said, pulling out his watch to check the time. “Might take half an hour t’reach Pegasus on this wind, and it’s best did you report just at Eight Bells, and the change of watch.”

  “Good-bye, Da . . . father. Sir.” Hugh manfully said, sticking out his hand for an adult shake, though his eyes had suddenly gone a bit tearful. They shook, and, to shun the grief, Lewrie pulled him in to give him that last, brief hug, after all, and thump him on his back. “Remember all the pranks were played on me when I first joined. The molasses in the hammock . . . come hear the dog-fish bark? Gather dilberries from the main-top, and for God’s sake, never go cryin’ for a Marine Private Cheeks, and absolutely refuse if they play ‘Building a Galley’!”

  “I’ll remember, sir,” Hugh said with a shaky laugh as he stepped back, settled the fit of his coat, and doffed his hat in a salute, which Lewrie returned in equally grave manner. “Write me, often as you can. I’ll write, as well.”