The King's Privateer

by Dewey Lambdin

  “Aye, I ’spect yer right, sir,” Cony said, brightening a little.

  “And in the meantime, I’ll make up what she cost you, Cony.”

  “T’ain’t rightly the money, sir, what was botherin’ me, but I thankee kindly.”

  “And remember, we’re on our way to the fabulous East Indies,” Alan said, trying to cheer him. “Nautch dancers, girls in veils so thin you can count their freckles! China, and almond-eyed darlings the Tsar of all the Russias can’t have, no matter how rich he is! It’s a big, wide, exciting world, Cony. Take joy of it!”

  Alan spread his arms and beamed a hopeful grin at his servant, and Cony began to chuckle. Then Alan looked over the bulwarks as a coach clattered up and Burgess Chiswick climbed out and looked up at the quarterdeck and the boarding ladder to the starboard gangway.

  Oh no it ain’t a big world, Alan cringed. It’s too damn small and getting smaller all the time! Goddamn, we’re part of the same hare-brained terror I tried to talk him out of! Is it too late to break my leg or something?

  “Uh, ain’t that young Mister Chiswick, sir?” Cony asked.

  “It is, indeed,” Alan almost moaned as Burgess espied them and waved gaily, pantomiming that he’d be aboard as soon as he paid off the coachee and got his chest up the gangplank.

  “Er … wasn’t you worried ’bout what ’e was gettin’ ’isself into, sir?” Cony inquired with a worried note to his voice.

  “That I was, Cony.”

  “Godamercy, Mister Lewrie, sir!” Cony blurted in alarm. “Ya don’t think that we … ’im an’ us’n … that same thing I ’eard ya goin’ on about?”

  “Looks devilish like it, Cony,” Alan groaned.

  “Godamercy, we’re fucked, ain’t we, sir?” Cony whispered.

  Chapter 6

  “Of all the luck,” Burgess Chiswick opined, draped across the transom settee in the officer’s wardroom, a warming mug of “flip” in one hand and a long church-warden clay pipe fuming in the other.

  “Yes, wasn’t it,” Lewrie agreed in a sarcastic drawl.

  “Sorry you missed us on the road, though,” Burgess went on, oblivious to Alan’s disgruntled feelings. “You must have been out of your lodgings like a race horse, soon as the letter came. We left London behind you. Went by Panton Street but they told us you’d already gone. Would have been nice to have coached down together.”

  Alan had been barred from discussing the murderous incident on the road, so all he could do was nod in agreement.

  “And then to find you’d stopped off at the farm and gone on,” Burgess told him, experimenting with blowing a smoke ring. “Caroline was very disappointed she’d missed you.”

  “Was she well?” Alan asked, abandoning his put-upon sulking.

  “My sister is very fond of you, Alan. As is mother. Thinks you hung the moon. Or at least helped out. She’s a fine young lady.”

  “Well, that’s moot for three or four years, ain’t it?” Alan sighed.

  “Hope you didn’t mind, but she adopted your cat.”

  “She did?”

  “Didn’t know you were fond of ’em,” Burgess marveled. “Still, I can see the attraction. Affectionate old thing. Purred away like anything, soon’s she picked him up, and rode in her lap all the way to Guildford in the coach. Thought he’d be happier on the farm. And … well, he’s a part of you, d’you see, Alan. She said to tell you she’d take good care of him until you got back.”

  “Yes, I suppose that’s best,” Alan agreed, trying to picture anyone picking William Pitt up and trying to dandle him. “After a warship, he’d enjoy terrorizing a herd of sheep. Devilish good mouser.”

  “More a lap-cat the last time I saw him,” Burgess chuckled.

  Shoes thundered on the double companion-way ladders from the upper deck, and their attention was drawn to the newcomer. The sight drew both of them to their feet, for its novelty if nothing else.

  A man stood there, a man with skin the color of a cup of cocoa. Fierce dark eyes glared under thick brows—the rest of the face was hidden behind a greying beard and a thick mustache that stood out stiff as the cat-heads up forward that held the ship’s anchors. The man was dressed in sandals over thick woolen stockings, loose knee-length trousers, a long-skirted coat that buttoned from waist to chin with a glittery multicolored silk sash about his waist, a burgundy colored old-style frock coat over that for warmth—and a turban.

  “What the devil?” Burgess muttered.

  “Namasté, sahib,” the apparition said, putting both mittened hands together and bowing slightly to both of them. “Meestair Twigg sahib, want speech with Elooy sahib.”

  “I think that might be you, Alan,” Burgess told him.

  “Yes, but who the devil’s this Twigg?” Alan wondered.

  “My master, Elooy sahib. Kshamakejiye … excuse me … I am being Ajit Roy. You come, jeehan? Yes?”

  “Yes,” Alan replied. “Is he ashore?”

  “Naheen, sahib,” Ajit Roy told him, pointing upwards. “Is here on ship.”

  “Keep the flip warm, Burgess,” Alan said to his companion. “And if I’m not back soon …”

  The servant padded back up the companion-way to the upper deck cabins under the poop, where the captain usually had his quarters. There were other cabins forward of his that Alan had thought might be reserved for passengers. Ajit Roy rapped on one door, and someone inside bade him enter. The servant swung the door wide and stepped aside to let Alan in.

  It was a fairly spacious cabin, considering. About twelve precious feet long bow to stern, and ten feet abeam. Piled as it was with chests, it seemed more like a storeroom, though, or a rug merchant’s tiny stall. Or an opium den, Alan thought, sniffing the air.

  “Achh-chaa, Roy-ji … Kuchh der men vahpasahiye’.”

  “Jeehan, Twigg-sahib,” Roy said, bowing himself out.

  “Lewrie, I’m Zachariah Twigg,” said the man, who had been sitting on the bunk, as he unfurled himself to his full height. This Twigg was tall and lean, almost impossibly lean: all arms and legs. He was dressed all in black like some dominee.

  “Your servant, sir,” Alan replied automatically, still befuddled, and thinking that he would most likely remain in that condition for some time to come.

  “Sit,” Twigg commanded, pointing out a chair with the flexible tube he held in his hand. “Captain Ayscough has related to me the peculiar circumstances of your incident. I want to ask you more about it.”

  “And you are, sir?” Alan demanded as Twigg perched himself cross-legged on the bunk again and began to draw from the tube, which Alan now saw was attached to a tall glass hubble-bubble pipe. In the faint gloom, illuminated by only a single lantern placed on one of the crates, Twigg resembled some kind of bird of prey. The face was all hollows—in his cheeks, behind his eyes, on either side of his temples. And his eye sockets were deep and pouchy. He wore his own hair, combed back thin and close to the skull, and a prominent peak jutted like a cape between receding temples. And Twigg’s nose was long, thin and narrow, like a raptor’s beak, until it reached the nostrils, where it flared out into a pad of flesh and cartilage an adult walrus could have envied.

  “Let us just say that Captain Ayscough answers to me. As do you, Lieutenant Lewrie,” Twigg told him with a brief, damnably brief, glint of humor. With the mouthpiece of the hubble-bubble pipe out of his mouth, the lips were caricature-thin, and pursed flat against each other in an expression of perpetual asperity. “I and my partner, Mister Wythy, are ship’s husbands, and the … owners, let us say. We were the ones bought her, raised the capital, and bought the cargo. Should anyone ask, you were here to discuss lading with me, as the fourth mate of a trading ship ought. Now discover everything to me.”

  It was not a request. Alan stumbled out the story of his attempted murder, and the reasons he and Ayscough thought might be behind it.

  Alan supposed England had spies. Any sensible nation did, and he gathered that Twigg and his partner were the front men for the adv
enture, the plausible story that would hang together should anyone become inquisitive. The prime movers of this subterfuge.

  “Doesn’t make any bloody sense.” Twigg snapped after a long silence. “Not to take anything away from your abilities, Lewrie, but you’re a rather small fish to fry, if someone was intent on delaying our departure. If it’s murder they’d stoop to, better me and Tom Wythy, or Ayscough himself. Better a fire in the hold than slay a junior officer. Might have even done us a favor. Given us time to find a more seasoned mariner than you. I’ve read your records, Lewrie. You’ve come up hellish fast, considering.”

  “If I do not please you, sir, perhaps you should,” Alan snapped back. It ain’t like I’m talking to an admiral, he thought; he’s no patron of mine whose back I have to piss down. They can send another man down from the Admiralty and I can hide out in Wheddon Cross with granny for a while until Lord Cantner cools off. Boring as that would be. Maybe coach back to Guildford and stay with the Chiswicks.

  “I would, but for the fact that you rose without too much ‘interest’ from those above you,” Twigg allowed, acting as if he was amused by Alan’s irritation with his remarks. “You’re not the run-of-the-mill place-seeker, Lewrie. And you have this fascinating talent for snatching victory from the very maw of defeat. For survival. I value that, more so than I do dull-witted competence. It’s a talent rarer than pluck and daring, or bravery. Any fool can be brave.”

  “I see, sir,” Alan said, wondering if he had been complimented or insulted. Either way, he was still part of this lunatick venture, it seemed, down for three years of naval service unless he begged to be dismissed.

  “We’ll get to the bottom of this before we sail, at any rate.” Twigg shrugged, and sucked deeply on his hubble-bubble pipe, caving in those already cadaverous cheeks even more. “Stores to be loaded on the morrow. Furniture, light artillery, military supplies for East India Company. Luxury items for our people out there as well. I expect we’ll be awash in beer, ale and wine. You’ll see to keeping the crew out of it, that it’s locked up securely. Bring a fortune in Kalikatta once it’s landed.”

  “They can’t brew their own, sir?”

  “Muslims won’t drink spirits of any kind. Hindoos have their own muck that’d flatten an Englishman, he were fool enough to partake.” Twigg frowned. “Water can’t be drunk in the East unless it’s been boiled and let cool in a clean vessel. Case of wine that’d cost you three shillings the bottle in London will go for five times that, and it’s safe to drink. I expect our cargo will pay for the purchase of Telesto, and her outfitting. First cargo to China with Bengali cloth and spices will defray the cost of our first year of operations.”

  “My God,” Alan gaped, trying to total that sum in his head. A 3rd Rate ship, even with half the artillery landed ashore, would go for at least twenty-five thousand pounds, and their profits would cover that?

  I’ve been in the wrong bloody profession! he told himself.

  “As Captain Ayscough instructed, not a word of this incident with your fellows in the wardroom. Show me your plan of lading after breakfast. I’ll have nothing broken, mind.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  “And keep in mind we’ll put in at Oporto or Vigo, maybe touch shore at Madeira as well, for passengers and more spirits. Save some cargo space in the deep hold for that. That’ll be all for now, Mister Lewrie. A pleasant night to you.”

  “Er, aye, sir,” Alan was forced to say, rising to leave.

  “Ajit?” Twigg called out.

  “Jeehan, sahib?” the Indian servant said through the closed door.

  “Idhar ahiye’! Mujhe’ sahib Wythy se’ baht karnee hai,” Twigg ordered. “Have an ear for languages, Mister Lewrie?”

  “Not much of one, really,” Alan confessed, wondering if his lack of fluency in anything but English would suddenly, blissfully, disqualify him from this goose-brained voyage.

  “You’ll pick it up. I just told Ajit to come here, that I wanted him to bring Wythy to talk with me. There’s enough bearers in Kalikatta who understand a little English, and if you pick up a word or phrase or two, you can stagger by. Bring this, fetch this, yes, no, too hot, too cold. You’ll sound like a monosyllabic barbarian to the Bengalis. But then, that’s pretty much what we are to them.”

  “Kalikatta,” Alan assayed.

  “Bengali name for Calcutta, up the Hooghly River. Where we’re going,” Twigg rasped out.

  “I thought it was Calicut, sir. That’s how Captain Ayscough said it.”

  “Then he’s as big a noddy as you are,” Twigg snapped.

  “Goodnight, sir.”

  “Namasté.”

  “Um, right. Namasté.”

  Whatever the hell that means, he pondered as he got out of Twigg’s sight as quickly as dignity allowed.

  Fortunately, in the next week, he had little to do with Twigg or his partner. He was busy being the most junior office aboard, working with the master’s mates and the purser in stowing cargo in the holds, and on the orlop deck above the bilges. Hundreds of kegs and tuns of spirits, salt-meats, crates of broadcloth and ready-made shirts and breeches. Uniforms for the East India Company’s native Bengali troops. Weapons and accoutrements. Books, and a printing press. Blank ledgers for the writers and clerks to fill up with numbers in their counting houses and trading factories. All those items of English life so sorely missed by the English in India, and the luxuries that made life worth living in an alien land.

  And there were ship’s stores to be piled away as well, to feed and clothe the officers and crew. A second complete set of sails and spars, replacement masts, miles of variously sized cordage for the standing rigging and the running rigging by which the sails and yards were adjusted. Powder and shot for Telesto’s guns. Spare hammocks, bag after bag of ship’s biscuit, holystones to scrub the decks with. Pikes and muskets, bayonets and cutlasses to repel any pirates hand-to-hand.

  It all had to be wedged in tighter than a bung in a barrel, and gravel ballast had to be packed in between the heaviest items lowest in the holds, cut firewood and kindling jammed between, so that nothing could shift an inch once Telesto was out at sea, pitching and tossing and rolling at the whim of the sea. Once out of harbor, it was life or death, and could not be redone if a storm overwhelmed them.

  Alan had to admit Telesto was an impressive ship. Compared to any other he had served in, she was massive—1,585 tons of oak and iron, 180 feet long on the range of the gun deck, 155 feet long at the keel and in the hold, and that hold was 20 feet deep, and 50 feet wide at her widest point, with a pronounced tumble-home to her upper deck that narrowed the quarterdeck and poop. Broad and bluff in the bows, gently tapering narrower aft like the head and tail of a fish, that shape adjudged best by naval architects to swim the seas of the world. An eighty-gunned 3rd Rate was the biggest ship in the Navy that could mount two decks of guns and not “hog” or strain down at both ends and break her back. The Royal Navy had not been lucky with them, since they were too light in the upper works to keep them from snapping like a twig in heavy seas, but Telesto was patterned upon the French Foudroyant after it was taken as prize in battle and had its lines taken off by the Admiralty to study and copy.

  She was as long and beamy as a one-hundred-gunned 1st Rate flagship of three decks, as if she had been “razeed,” shaved down by one deck to make her faster and lighter. And as with French ships, in Alan’s experience, she was a little finer around the cutwater at the bow, and in her entry. She promised speed, and with so much cargo aboard, would ride out a gale of wind without as much angle of heel as other ships, even counting the wide span of her yards and upper masts for propulsion.

  New as Telesto was, her hull was still golden under the preserving oils, not yet baked almost black. Her two rows of gunports were painted with twin stripes of bright red paint. No one was going to spring good money to fancy her up like a flagship, so the usual gilt trim around the entry-port gates, beakhead, taffrail carvings and the walkways and windows of her thr
ee stern galleries had been omitted, and a light yellow lead paint had been substituted.

  “She’ll fly like a seagull,” Artemus Choate, her first officer predicted happily. “You take passage on a ‘John Company’ Indiaman, it’s six knots when the sun’s up, and they reef in and wallow slow as church-work, sundown to sunrise. Don’t want to upset the passengers, I suppose.” The tow-headed man in his middle thirties grimaced at the habits of civilian seamen. “Four months to round Good Hope and another three to the Bay of Bengal, if the seasonal winds are with you.”

  “It’s five shillings a day for an officer, too, sir,” Alan pointed out. “Who’d be in a hurry at that rate of pay?”

  “Ha, you’ve a point, Mister Lewrie, ’deed you do. But we’ll drive this ship like Jehu drove his chariot, weather permitting.”

  Telesto sometimes felt Navy in the way things were run even in harbor. But of an evening, she was as much a merchantman as any Indiaman. Ayscough and Choate, and Tom Wythy, the other partner, liked music, so Telesto had a good selection of bandsmen: fifers, fiddlers, drummers and the unheard of luxury of a bellows pump-organ—that mostly for the passengers’ amusement. She also had six men in the crew who doubled as bagpipers, and most evenings would perform a concert on the upper gun deck up forward by the forecastle and the belfry. Alan wished they wouldn’t, but Ayscough was some sort of Lowland Scot, and doted on them. It irritated Lewrie, and put the milk cow off production. The sheep, pigs, goats and chickens in the manger didn’t care for them much, either.

  As for passengers, there wasn’t much joy there. Alan had fantasized about a few English females taking passage to India, but no such luck. Their forty or so paying guests were all solidly male, all fairly young and just a trifle seedy in appearance. Clerks and writers-to-be, young tradesmen who’d finished their apprenticeships and were heading out where the competition wasn’t so fierce. Some men like Burgess of limited means who would take military service in “John Company” as subalterns. Not one sign of a “Mother Abbess” and her brood of whores to service all that emigré masculinity out in the Indies, either. God help him, they all looked so “skint” and short of money even a card game would be unproductive.