The King's Privateer

by Dewey Lambdin

  “I am captain of this vessel. Andrew Ayscough,” the older man informed him, civilly offering his hand.

  It was not the first time that Alan Lewrie had been totally stupefied in his life—certainly it was not going to be the last—but the way his jaw dropped, and the ashen pallor which claimed his phyz did much to convince his new captain he was dealing with a slack-jawed fool.

  “Are ye well, Mister Lewrie?” Ayscough asked.

  “I would be a lot better, sir, if I hadn’t seen you dead in the road east of Ivybridge,” Alan finally stammered.

  To make matters worse, there was a superficial similarity to the dead Ayscough. This living version had salt-and-pepper hair, eyes of a most penetrating nature, a seamanly queue of hair over the collar of his plain blue coat and the same weathered face, though the man that stood before Lewrie bore the unconscious, outward ton of command that the other had not.

  “My cabin, Mister Lewrie,” Ayscough suggested with a harsh rasp.

  “Aye, sir.”

  They made their way aft from the starboard gangway to the quarterdeck, then under the poop. Aft of there were many cabins usually not found on a man-of-war, before they reached the captain’s quarters right aft. There was no Marine sentry, no one to guard the lord and master’s privacy. And as Alan had observed, even in his present confused state, no inkling of Navy anywhere aboard Telesto.

  “Now what the devil is this?” Ayscough asked, flinging his hat across the cabins to hook onto a peg with a practiced motion.

  “Sir, I should like to see some bona fides that you are who you say you are before I say another word,” Alan finally managed.

  “Piss on what you want, you impudent puppy!” Ayscough rapped back. “Prove to me you’re who you say you are first.”

  Alan dug into his coat and drew out his letters from the Admiralty, laid them on Ayscough’s desk and let the man peruse them.

  “Alan Lewrie, to be fourth officer, right,” Ayscough allowed grudgingly. “Here.” He produced his own papers from a drawer in his desk, a drawer that he had to unlock first.

  “Post-captain, Royal Navy,” Alan read aloud. “Very well, sir. I shall have to take on faith that you are a commission Sea Officer.”

  “Now what the devil is this tale of yours?”

  Alan repeated his assertion, and filled the man in on what had occurred on the forest road. He produced the note, and what was left of the guineas in the purse.

  “We found nothing else on them, sir,” Alan concluded. “At first, I thought it might be … well, something of a personal nature. Someone trying to gain revenge for an incident that happened in London before I departed. But the coincidence of the name, well … now I wonder.”

  “What sort of an incident?” Ayscough demanded, mollifying his tone and his suspicious glower enough to trot out a squat leather bottle of brandy and offer Lewrie a glass.

  “Um, it was a lady, sir. Her husband … names aren’t important, surely, for the lady’s sake. Now, the gentleman was quite old, unable to duel, but he swore he’d have my heart’s blood.” Alan tried to quibble around the meat of the matter.

  “He had suspicions you were tupping his wife?”

  “A little stronger than suspicion, sir.” Alan shrugged, feeling as at-sea and cornered as he had during his first interview with his captain aboard Ariadne back in 1780. Ayscough raised his eyebrows and almost unbent from his stiffness for a moment.

  “Not flagrante delicto, surely,” Ayscough finally asked.

  “Well engaged, sir,” Alan said, nodding in affirmation.

  “Damme, what sort o’ sailors they going to send me, then?” the captain barked. “Can’t even manage a boarding action without witnesses. Yes, I can see why you thought it might be personal, except for the following facts: one, this assassin used my name; two, he knew the name of this ship; three, he knew you were to join her; and, four, he knew the route you were taking. Daddies trying to head off their daughters on their way to Gretna Green to elope with some smarmy bastard have less information. I don’t like the smell of this, Lewrie. I want you to go ashore and take lodgings for a couple of days until we have more of our people assembled. The Lamb and Flag is good.”

  “Not there, sir.” Alan protested, “The man knew that, too!”

  “Goddamn my eyes!” Ayscough roared, slamming a tough fist on his desk, hard enough to make the deck quake. “There’s a spy about. Back in London, unless I miss my guess. I know it involves the honor of a lady, Lewrie, but just who was this son of a bitch you think was behind your attempted murder?”

  “Lord Roger Cantner, sir.”

  “Hmm.” Ayscough pondered, drumming fingers and staring at the overhead beams, dropping out of his energetic anger in a flash. “No, I’ve never heard of him. And surely, it wasn’t anyone at the Admiralty.”

  “Pardon me, sir,” Alan interrupted Ayscough’s musings. “But if I might inquire … what the hell am I doing here, and what the devil is this commission all about?”

  “They told you nothing.”

  “No, sir, only that it would be discovered to me after I got to Plymouth,” Alan confessed.

  “Why, Mister Lewrie, we’re off to the East Indies!” Ayscough replied, snapping erect and pacing his spacious cabins. “Off to see elephants and fakirs, Bombay, Madras, Calicut. We’ll not be allowed to carry trade from there to England, no, that’s for the Honourable East India Company—long may Leadenhall Street and India House stand—but we’ll be engaged in the country trade, just one more Interloper in a whole bloody fleet of them. Up and down the coast, over to Siam, to Canton in China and back during the trading season.”

  “Sir, I thought we were a warship,” Alan protested, beginning to get a sinking feeling. Had Sir Onsley Matthews gotten an inkling of his affair with Lady Delia—was this his way of ending it?

  God help me, is this part of the same mad scheme poor Burgess Chiswick was saddled with, he wondered, starting with an audible gasp.

  “If needs be, we are, Mister Lewrie,” Ayscough chuckled. “I have it on good authority that you’re good with artillery, with small arms. You’ve done some hellish desperate deeds ashore, too. Yorktown, was it? On the Florida coast? Well, you’ll get your chance to shine, let me tell you! Telesto will be well-armed, just like an Indiaman. Twelve-pounders on the quarterdeck and the fo’c’sle for chase guns. Eighteen-pounders on either beam on the upper gun deck. We’ll turn the lower gun deck into quarters and cargo hold, with a few thirty-two-pounders hidden away just in case. Thirty-two-pounder carronades for you to play with.”

  “I don’t understand, sir,” Alan said, shaking his head, still in a fog. “We’re armed, but we’re not a warship?”

  “Officially, we’re the only vessel of a new trading company in the East Indies, what the nabobs of ‘John Company’ call a country ship,” Ayscough continued in a softer voice, leaning back onto his desk conspiratorially. “You’ll have no need for your naval uniforms. We’ll have a letter of marque from the Admiralty, and from ‘John Company,’ so we may pass as a privateersman, if needs be. Hmm, might as well reveal all, now I’ve your rapt attention. Shut your mouth, Mister Lewrie; you catch flies like that.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  “There’s a section of the peace treaty ending the last war that allows us, the Frogs, the Dutch and the Spaniards, only five warships in the Great South Seas,” Ayscough muttered softly, pouring them some more brandy. “And none of them will be anything larger than a Fifth Rate frigate or a Fourth Rate fifty-gunned two-decker, see. But the Frogs … aye, the bloody Frogs; it’s always them, isn’t it? We got wind they were putting ships like us out in the Far East, based out of Pondichery and the island of Mauritius. Shadowing the China trade, the round the Cape trade. Laying low until the next war, innocent as you please … for now. And what’s worse, stirring up the local pirate fleets. Giving them modern arms. Creating native levies for the next war. Only so much our five obvious ships can do about it. But, what a private vessel, out on her l
awful occasions may do is quite another.”

  “So we’re to lay low out there ’til the next war, sir? Stir up levies of our own? Arm pirates against the French trade as well?”

  “Not quite that far. Confounding the French will suffice,” the captain replied, smiling bleakly. “For now, I want you to act a role for me. As a half-pay lieutenant, a little short of the wherewithal, and … God bless me, what a wonderful charade your recent troubles are … you’re fleeing a step ahead of an angry husband! So you’re taking a berth in merchant service for your prosperity and your health … . it’s perfect!”

  “And the crew, sir?”

  “We’re all Navy aft, except for a few gentlemen whose expertise in the East Indies is vital to the venture. And our two super-cargo. Our putative owners, d’you see. Navy down to our bones,” Ayscough said, thumping the desk once more, this time more softly—covertly. “Warrants, mates, quarter-gunners and gun-captains, yeomen and all are in on it. The ones we thought we could trust have brought friends from other commissions. We know who to look for at the Lamb and Flag. Ordinary seamen, landsmen, idlers and waisters; we can pick up reliable hands enough. Long as the pay’s good, most English seamen don’t care much what the job is, long’s they get their merchantman’s pay and decent tucker.”

  “And a hearty rum ration, sir.” Alan smiled for the first time.

  “That’s the truth, by God it is, sir!” Ayscough barked in glee. “Well, I thank you for your information about this false Ayscough. I have a feeling you’d have been replaced with a fake if he’d succeeded. And thankee for the word on the Lamb and Flag. Somebody knows a little too much for my liking, before we even got the sails bent onto the yards. Too many coincidences to think it a personal vendetta against you. No, I think someone in the pay of a foreign power wanted to delay our sailing. Eliminate one or more of our key people and keep us in port until we’d whistled up others. You come highly recommended, Mister Lewrie. It’s only natural some Frog spy would want you dead.”

  “I see, sir.” Alan preened a little. It never hurt his feelings to have a little more praise heaped on. “A little daunting, though. To think that somewhere out there in Plymouth, there’s a Frenchman just waiting to put a knife between my ribs. Perhaps I should stay aboard …”

  “No, we’ll have to act natural,” Ayscough said, waving off his suggestion. “Watch your back for the next few days, though. Don’t travel alone. There’s some good mates already aboard who’ll do for keeping you alive, real scrappers if it comes to a fight—men from my last ship. Take them along on your errands.”

  “Um … doesn’t it strike you, though, sir, that if someone is on to us already, and tried to put me out of the way, that the whole gaff is blown?” Alan pointed out. “We might as well sail into Bombay flying battle flags, and we won’t know which French ships are our enemies.”

  “As far as I’m concerned, every French ship is a foe,” Captain Ayscough snarled. “And there’s a good chance we may nip this in the bud, before we sail. There weren’t half a dozen people in London who know about our existence. We’re being paid for out of private funds. East India Company, Crown general funds, Admiralty Victualling Board and Ordnance Board. Nothing anyone may trace. But somebody talked out of turn. Or someone is in the pay of the French. We shall find out who, and when we do, that bastard’ll wish he was never born!”

  That was all Ayscough could, or would, impart. Other than the fact that to the Admiralty, Alan would remain listed as a half-pay officer, with a note for him not to be called up, as if there were a black mark against him. He would receive no more than regular Navy pay from their purser, and his half-pay would not be disbursed or saved for him. Until he returned to England, there would be no official record of this service. That was galling, and a little disconcerting. After all, he had made a good record, and now, for the sake of secrecy, he had a big question mark about his abilities or suitability for promotion or service in his records, even if it was a sham. How easy would it be for a clerk to get befuddled, and that would stay with him for the rest of his life? I mean, damme, he thought: the bloody Navy’s the only thing I ever stand a chance of being really good at!

  Lewrie strolled to the quarterdeck bulwarks to look down on the bustling wharves and warehouses next to which Telesto was tied up. The stone dock teemed with seamen, carters, chandlers, stevedores and mongers of every gew-gaw, trinket, notion and edible known to man.

  I’m half a civilian, Alan thought gloomily. I suppose I should act like one. He stuck his hands in his breeches pockets and leaned on the bulwark, something he’d not done since his first day of naval service so long ago (and had almost gotten caned for it, then) and slouched.

  Damme, I’ll have to go ashore, just to buy plain coats and a hat or two, he speculated. Most of my kit in my sea-chest will do, once we’re out at sea. Why, oh why, didn’t anyone take the trouble to tell me all of this before I left London? Probably didn’t think I could be trusted. Probably thought I’d beg off if I knew how bare-arsed an adventure they’d dreamed up. And I would have, too, Lord Cantner and his bully-boys be damned. Trot this lunatick idea out in the comfort of a club chair and I’d have been halfway to Liverpool before they could even begin to think of trying to catch me!

  “’Scuse me, sir,” Cony said, coming to his side. “I checked in with the pusser, an’ ’e gimme your cabin, sir. Got yer kit stowed away ready for ya. Yer on the upper gun deck, starboard side, third cabin forrud o’ the wardroom table. Tried fer larboard, sir, but h’it was no go.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “I heard tell from a mate o’ mine in Desperate all the quality goes larboard east, starboard ’ome, on an Indiaman. The shady side, I ’spects, sir, an’ the sun out there can be fierce, I’ve heard.”

  “Well, thanks for trying, Cony. How about you?” Alan sighed, wishing he’d gotten packed and out of his lodgings before that messenger caught up with him.

  “The pusser figgerd I’d make a cabin servant for wot passengers we get, sir,” Cony replied, sounding almost fiendishly cheerful. “I’ll still be yer ’ammockman and man-servant, sir. Beats turnin’ out on a dark night t’ ’all Hands aloft an’ reef sail,’ it do, sir.”

  “That won’t last longer than your meeting with the first mate,” Alan gloomed, perking up a little at taking Cony’s expectations of an easy job down a peg or two.

  “Well, won’t be the first time I went t’ sea anyways, is it, sir?” Cony almost cackled.

  “My God, but you’re in a particularly good mood!”

  “Sorry, sir.” Cony sobered up. “H’it’s just … well, London was beginnin’ t’ get a little … boresome I guess ya could call h’it, sir. I got right used t’ bein’ a seaman an’ all. An’ if I’d stayed, well … t’was best when ya got yer letter an’ I could come away with ya, Mister Lewrie, sir. I … I know yer a fair hand with the ladies an’ all, sir. An’ I know h’it’s not my place t’ say anythin’ ’bout wot ya do. But I got meself in a deal o’ trouble from messin’ where I oughtn’t. I was gonna ask ya what I should do ’bout it, you bein’ a fair hand, as I said …” Cony began to blush and stammer, turning his gaze to the sanded plank deck. “An’, uh … uhmm …”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Cony, how bad could it be?” Alan demanded. Will Cony was probably the last of God’s own innocents, though how he managed that feat being around Lewrie for very long, was anyone’s guess.

  “Well, t’was that pretty little Abigail, sir, the one who done for ya when I ’ad me days off, sir? Well, uhm … some nights below-stairs, sir. Lord, sir, I …”

  “Have I been a bad influence on you, Cony?” Alan smiled.

  “Well, sir, when I seed all them pretty lasses ya spooned on, h’it set my ’umours t’ ragin’ more’n a night’r two, an’ … well, me an’ Abigail … I guess ya could say we sorta … indulged ourselves a time’r two, sir, on the sly.”

  “I would have been even more amazed if you hadn’t, Cony,” Alan told him gently, tr
ying to find a way not to burst out laughing in the poor man’s face. “She was a lovely young girl, and you’re a fine figure of a young fellow yourself. Only natural.”

  “Well, sir, h’it felt natural as all get-out! Until she tol’ me, right a’fore we packed up an’ come away t’ Plymouth, sir, that we was gonna have a baby.”

  “She never!” Alan gaped.

  “Yessir, she did. My get, sir! I didn’t know what t’ do ’bout h’it, sir, so I give her what little I’d been able t’ save from my prize-money an’ all. Twenty pounds, sir,” Cony wailed in conclusion.

  “Ah,” Alan intoned, turning away to look out toward Rame Head and the harbor mouth before he began cackling like a demented cuckoo.

  It was all a lie, damn her little black heart, he giggled inside. Goddamn, I’ve been had! If she truly is “ankled,” I’ll lay any odds you want half London is trembling in their boots and paying up their fair share! Oh, she played me perfect! Goddamn my eyes, what a little scamp! She ought to marry Clotworthy Chute and bilk the rest of England! And poor Cony, he thought. What to tell him?

  “I’m sure you did the right thing, Cony,” he told him. “You can do a lot better should you ever decide to settle down and marry. Sweet girl and all, pretty as a pup, but …”

  “I was sorta sweet on ’er, sir,” Cony objected. “Iffen h’it weren’t for the baby comin’ s’ soon, I mighta …”

  “But awfully young and … you need someone a little closer to your own age, Cony, someone who’s had the rough edges knocked off first. Somebody who’ll be a real helpmate to you when you settle down. Some girl not so … flippant, I suppose. You did come away, though, didn’t you.”

  “Yessir, I did.” Cony mooned about, almost shuffling his feet together. “I suppose yer right, sir. Come a toucher o’ stayin’, though, that I did. Did I do right, sir?”

  “You’ve provided for her and your babe. And you can look her up when we get back to London, if you’ve a mind. She might be more settled, more mature and suited to your nature by then. One never knows.”