Britannia’s Son (The Duty and Destiny Series, Book 4)

by Andrew Wareham

  “Possibly, sir. I left her about six months before they took her into the Dons, sir, and ended up joining Sir Frederick when he was First of the Athene – which was good luck for me, whatever way you look at it.”

  “Wise man! Nasty affair.”

  “On both sides, sir. I was glad to be out of it.”

  Neither commented on the fact that it was not legally possible for a member of the lower deck simply to ‘leave’ a ship in commission.

  Four brief whistles came, one from each of the parties of men surrounding the area to say that they were in contact with each other, no gaps on left or right. Three blasts in response and the cordon began to tighten, walking slowly in, each man carrying one of the yard-long, two finger thick sticks thoughtfully supplied in the wains. Figures became visible in the half-darkness, the barn closely covered, a pair of men at each window and door of the pub. First shouts of alarm came from the barn and the sounds of loud oration ceased.

  “Shall we join the party, Mr Ablett?”

  They ambled peacefully to the barn doors, hauled them wide open, waited for silence.

  “Press! You are invited to volunteer for…”

  The explosion of running bodies cut the lieutenant short. He stepped to one side, watched with mild interest as the would-be fugitives stopped short at the rank of grinning seamen. Almost all submitted silently to the hands that tied them and pushed them into line, though a couple sat on the ground holding their heads. Shouts round the back showed that the quicker-witted had slipped out of the side door and been caught there. Only one man avoided capture, and he simply stood still in a dark corner of the barn and waited until he heard the party move off before going home and climbing into the bed which he then maintained he had never left.

  Last out of the barn, not being quick on their feet, came the two members of the politically active classes, full of indignation.

  “What is your name, sir? I shall publish this outrage, your name shall be steeped in infamy!”

  “Have you a protection, sir?”

  “A what? Don’t be stupid! I’ll have you know that I am…”

  “You are pressed, sir!” The lieutenant ignored the immediate outburst, nodded to a petty officer, ostentatiously turned his back as sudden silence fell.

  “Forty seven, all except two, young and fit – my regards and best thanks to Sir Frederick, Mr Ablett.”

  It was unlawful to press a man who had never used the sea; any such who were taken up merely had to put their case to the local magistrates in their court and they would instantly be released.

  Ablett wandered into the White Boar as the wains rattled in and loaded up.

  “Pint, John, if thee’d be so good.” He took a long drink, rested an elbow on the bar, glanced about in the lamplight, weighing up the familiar, older faces. “Sir Frederick ain’t best pleased that you should let your place be used to preach revolution, John.”

  The landlord owned his freehold, was theoretically his own master but knew very well what would happen if the word was circulated that he was ‘not the right sort’. He grew his own barley, had his own brewhouse and malt loft, needed to hire horses, wagons and hands at harvest, plough teams and a harrow before sowing, the farmers going out of their way to accommodate him – they mostly enjoyed a mug, too. Nothing would be available to him if the hard word was spoken. No tenant or worker for the four big proprietors would cross his threshold if he became known as unreliable. He would be broke within two years, or might be able to sell for a tenth of the pub’s value if they felt generous.

  “Times are ‘ard, Mr Ablett, and gold rare to come by – and I never said a word when I see thee in ‘ere of an evening, like what you never done before.”

  “Fair enough, John, no more to be said, this time – but, if there should be another time, Sir Frederick would expect to hear from you.”

  “That ‘e will, Mr Ablett, s’welp me Gawd!”

  “Thank’ee, John. Half a guinea on the counter, man – fill them on Abbey tonight. Good night to you!”

  Women appeared on the street, hands clenched in aprons. The wains pulled out, leering sailors calling out to them, making obvious suggestions about the empty beds they had left behind. Ablett stood next to the mother of their parlour maid, asked if she recognised any of the faces in the wagons.

  “Forty seven, Sir Frederick, including one of Martin’s and one of Kent’s boys. Not their eldest, of course, sir, couple of lads not much more than schoolboys, but old enough to know better!”

  “Young fools who should know better than get mixed up with a mob, that’s for sure. They will learn the error of their ways, I trust.”

  “I hopes so, sir. If they don’t they’ll be angry men when they come back, if ever they do.”

  “Easier to deal with men than boys, Ablett. You can shoot a man who tries to burn you out, but people get upset when you kill boys for the same thing.”

  Kent was at the door of the estate office deep in conversation with Hartley when Frederick stirred out after breakfast; he looked his normal, straight-backed, rigidly uncompromising self, showed no signs of distress or anger that Frederick could see.

  “Good morning, Sir Frederick – I came here as soon as I found out what had happened, sir, to give my apologies to Mr Hartley, for I saw no need to disturb you, sir. I am sorry that any son of mine could be such a damned fool, sir – had I known about it, I would have taken a stick to him and driven him out of my house – a farmer’s son mixed up with rick-burners!”

  “He will have a while on the Brest blockade to get it out of his system, Kent, and perhaps give him something else to think about.”

  “It will more likely than not kill him, Sir Frederick, for he’s a soft young bugger, for all I could do! Takes after his mother, my first wife, and she was too soft for her good or mine – but it may make a man of him still. A hard winter will make him or break him, that’s for sure.”

  “Either way, it seemed to me better than dragoons and a hanging, Kent.”

  “That’s for sure, sir – soft he may be, but I’d not have liked to watch him hang, for his mother’s sake as much as anything. Still, enough of that, Sir Frederick, what I been thinking about this twelvemonth, sir, is milk! With the turnpike coming we could set up a big dairy and run out butter and cheese by the ton and sell it fresh in Poole and Dorchester, maybe cream as well. They townies got money, some of them, and they want better food.”

  “You do not produce milk enough yourself, Kent, not for that.”

  “No, Sir Frederick, that’s why I got to talk to Mr Hartley, here. You got herds on your two places, and milk that just goes to the pigs, and Martin’s got more than he can use, and my lord and Sir Geoffrey, though we might not be able to get a fair price of Mr Robinson, sir.”

  “What will you do with the skim, Kent?”

  “Pigs, sir – in time we might have to go in for bacon and hams for the town, too.”

  “Mr Hartley?”

  “If Kent does not do it then we will, Sir Frederick!”

  “Make it so – I will talk to my lord and Sir Geoffrey and Mr Robinson. I imagine that is why you wanted me to know, Kent?”

  The harsh face creased in a reluctant smile; he nodded.

  Red eyes in the Martin household, many a tear shed over poor William, and some degree of trepidation for it seemed that one of the orators of the previous evening had been a tutor at his school and that it was William who had introduced him to the village.

  “A foolish act, Martin, and one for which he and more than two score other sons of the parish will suffer. It is fortunate that he is little more than a boy.”

  “He was led astray, Sir Frederick.”

  “So it would seem, Martin, and now he has strayed all the way to the Brest blockade. William is a clever lad, I am told, and his captain is a fair and honest man. If the boy shows aptitude and willingness to work he may well be invited onto the quarterdeck, made midshipman and be given a chance. Has he any mathematics?”


  “No, Sir Frederick – he was more concerned to read Latin and Greek.”

  “A pity, but his future is to some extent in his own hands now. He must make himself a man.”

  Martin’s face crumpled – he had no expectation of ever seeing his boy again, hoped at best to receive a confirmation of his death rather than be left to wonder. The lad had had too sheltered an upbringing, he felt, sat on the bench of Latin school, to survive a winter on blockade.

  “It was a hard thing to do, Sir Frederick, pressing all they poor boys.”

  “They were going rick-burning last night, Martin, and maybe they would have burnt the Robinson Home Farm, too. Had they done so then the dragoons and Yeomanry would be here by now, with a list of Reds in their hands. Half of them were known already, the rest would have been named by midday, for they would not have been gentle with the boys! And you know what would have come next.”

  Martin’s wife spoke up, worn and weather-beaten at forty, a hard working life showing in her face.

  “They would have built a gallows in each village, turned they off a dozen in each, Sir Frederick.”

  “And nothing I could do to stop them, Mrs Martin. This way they have a hope, at least.”

  “Maybe, sir, but what of they wicked men what led they boys astray, sir? They won’t come to no harm, they got friends in Parliament and London, they says.”

  “Ajax sailed on this morning’s tide, Mrs Martin, she should be five miles offshore by now. They will have had to be mighty quick in telling their friends of their plight! Besides, Captain Ainslie knows of them and will make quite sure they are looked after properly.”

  She took his meaning, smiled grimly, murmured her thanks.

  “Kent will be talking to you about your milk, Martin, sometime soon. He means to set up a dairy to run butter and cheese into the towns.”

  “Aye, Sir Frederick – we talked it over last market day. What I been thinking about, sir, is eggs, that could go into town by the gross in the same wagons. With four daughters at home poultry makes sense, sir, so long as we can keep the fox away.”

  “You’ve got a fowling piece, Martin, I know that, Ablett was working on it last month. Lay up for the fox and solve his problems for him, man!”

  “Sir Geoffrey’s got a real down on anybody what shoots foxes and spoils his sport, sir.”

  “On my land, I say what can be done, Martin, not Sir Geoffrey. The hunt wants to preserve foxes – well and good – but they can preserve them on their land, not mine! You keep your acres clear of the vermin and tell any man who complains to speak to me.”

  Hartley received the news with delight, he had been hinting for months to Martin that he should branch out.

  “On that topic, Sir Frederick, there is a consortium in Poole has approached us. They have bought a lugger, a taken smuggler, and wish to set her up as a privateer, would like you to contribute your name, a thou’ or so in cash and as much advice as you can spare.”

  “No. A bad season and she would be free-trading again to pay the crew, on the side, probably, without our knowledge. Profits are too chancy in the Channel – a private ship of war must needs be large enough to go foreign, beating up the Spanish coast, or even the Italian, or the Sugar Islands. They are bad for the reputation, these little picaroons, Mr Hartley. No discipline, because the crews are tiny and all know each other, out of the same small port very often, and they turn to butchery of inconvenient prisoners and rape and murder of passengers only too easily. As a serving officer it would do me no good at all to be associated with one.”

  Hartley was appalled, could not imagine Englishmen doing such things, but agreed that they must turn down the offer.

  “A letter from Captain Jackman, Frederick. His thanks for our hospitality, very well expressed, he writes a good letter, well tutored. He has been ordered to the Cape, he says, to play a part in the suppression of piracy out of Madagascar and make patrols to the Mauritius, his ship having been armed for the purpose with a mixture, he says, of heavy carronades and twelve pound long guns, and a long chaser. A nuisance, for I had intended him for Charlotte, had meant to bring them together if possible.”

  “Well, my love, you could always try Warren instead – we shall see him more often off blockade.”

  “Perhaps – I find Captain Jackman more truly the gentleman, however. He tells me he has a servant and a cox’n, two old Athenes appearing in his crew and thus having a claim.”

  “Does he name them?”

  “No, unfortunately not.”

  “A pity, I would have liked to know… How old is Charlotte? Surely not too concerned to wed yet?”

  “She will be eighteen this year – old enough. As is my brother, sir.”

  “George – a couple of years younger than me, I believe?”

  “He is twenty four, Frederick – and shows no signs of involvement with any of the many young ladies he has danced with. Quite the opposite, in fact – he seems almost frightened of them!”

  “He is very reserved, nervous, does not seem to know how to go on in the company of women. He needs, in fact, to discover that it is not for stirring tea with!”

  “What is not for stirring tea with?” Elizabeth asked with great suspicion.

  He replied with a wealth of graphic gesture.

  “Ablett? You don’t know of one of the young maids at Partington’s who’s no better than she ought to be?”

  “Not off hand, sir. Why?”

  “The young master seems to be in urgent need of having his luck changed, from all I can gather.”

  Ablett grinned, agreed the boy was overdue for a pleasant surprise.

  “I’ll see what can be done, sir, on the quiet.”

  “Upstairs maid, sir – she’s a few years younger than him and about twenty five years more experienced. I’ve given her ten guineas and a promise she’ll be looked after if my lord gets wind of it and throws her out. I gave her the money yesterday and I expect she’ll have him tucked up nice and warm by now.”

  “All successful, sir,” Ablett reported the following week. “She got nowhere smiling and hinting, so she walked in on him one night when he was reading in bed, showed him something much more interesting than his book. She said he’s a really good boy, well mannered, and his wife was going to be lucky. From all I gather she’s going back to him because she wants to, not for our money.”

  “Tell her there’s a cottage at Long Common if she needs to move in as a widow woman with a baby – and to leave without him knowing or worrying if she falls.”

  “She will, sir – she’s a good girl – if I didn’t have a missus already I’d take her on meself – but one’s enough for me!”

  Book Four: The Duty and Destiny Series

  Chapter Three

  In theory, at least, London was devoid of the company of the civilised and well-born, the haunt exclusively of Cits and the middle classes, except for the two months of the Season, but they found the hotels to be almost full, the shops crowded, the fashionable lounges busy with genteel faces. The Opera was closed but almost every other entertainment was as active as ever and Elizabeth’s objections to the immorality of the playhouse were overcome at least to the extent of Shakespeare – for the Bard, after all, was England!

  Frederick wondered exactly what she meant, but doubted he would understand her explanation, so nodded wisely and enjoyed the play – he regretted Bosomtwi could not be with them, but it was November and he had to be in Long Common.

  Sheet music could be bought in any of a dozen shops, they found, or at a penny a go on street corners, but not perhaps for the polite. Elizabeth laid out a careful three guineas, to Frederick’s irritation. He took over the transaction.

  “Will you establish the account of Lady Harris, please – piano scores and transcriptions – we would wish to build a library. Scarlatti, Clementi, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach as well as London Bach; Mozart and Haydn, obviously, and such others as occur to you to be of interest amongst the moderns. The simplest course wou
ld be if you were to sort out your stock and send to Abbey a copy of each you have, keeping a list, and then forwarding new as they publish and discovering such other scores as may be in print. This will involve you in some extra expense and inconvenience, I doubt not, so it would be preferable if the account were to start in credit?”

  The shopkeeper agreed instantly – his customers all loved music but few were so enamoured of paying their bills.

  Frederick pulled a sheaf of paper from a bulging inner pocket – a sight which would have made a fashionable tailor weep – sorted through the collection of notes disclosed.

  “Fifty on Hoares would be satisfactory, as a start, sir?”

  It would be eminently so – the larger emporia were familiar with notes from all over the country, the smaller preferred the known London houses, Hoares being one of the most familiar.

  “Frederick! Fifty pounds – that is more than we pay Wymington for a whole year!”

  “Yes?”

  “It is an extravagance!”

  “Yes. You will play the music, and we will both enjoy it. We shall build a library which our children and theirs will thank us for.”

  “We only have one child.”

  “Yet!”

  “But… it is wrong to spend so much money on nothing more than pleasure and self-indulgence.”

  “I do not agree, ma’am! I visited my prize agent yesterday, and he told me that he had deposited slightly more than eleven thousands of pounds, transmitted from Ceylon, in my account in the last three months – clear of encumbrance – and that he expected some hundreds more to come in yet. We can afford to spend a few of those hundreds this year, I believe – not on horses and gambling, but on rational pleasures which form part of the life of the civilised man!”

  She was unconvinced – Mankind had not been set upon the Earth for pleasure, or so she understood her Bible.