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

by Andrew Wareham

  Lady Partington considered Oliver Cromwell, and his wart, and concluded that it was all too deep for her. She would be content to tend her parish and say her prayers for both of her daughters, her erring son, her tormented husband, her enigmatic son-in-law, and occasionally even herself.

  At Abbey another example of Frederick’s tender-heartedness was battering at the big front door. Ragged, foot-sore and hungry, recently rained upon but still in urgent need of a bath, a four foot tall, ten year old waif confronted Wymington.

  “Is this ken Abbey, wot belongs to Sir Fuzzy-Wuzzy ‘Arris, mister?”

  “This house is the property of Sir Frederick Harris and belongs to the Abbey estate, young man. And who are you?”

  “I’m Harold, wiv-an-Haitch! Sir F… Frederick said to me I got to come to ‘is ken anytime as ‘ow I wanted to get off the streets – an’ I’d be a real bloody fool iffen I didn’t, mister! Says as ‘ow there’s work or go for a sailor. Give us a gold guinea, so ‘e did, only the bastards pinched it whiles I was akip! I saw ‘im, Sir Frederick, draw them pistols of ‘is so quick, left and right, bang, bang! ‘Swot I’m going to do to them when I goes back a man grown!”

  A good butler takes anything in his stride, including vengeance-seeking street urchins.

  “Well, you must come inside, Harold. Later, I will show you the door at the back that those of us who work for Sir Frederick use. First, though, Sir Frederick is in his library and I shall take you to him.”

  Harold had seen the outside of many a large building in London, had not been especially over-awed at the door, but the interior – polished, clean, rich, sweet-smelling – did much to impress him. The library, though nothing to his illiteracy, was a prosperous, organised, overpowering room, wholly outside of his experience, and scared him.

  “Sir Frederick? Harold has come to us from London, at your invitation, I believe.”

  “Harold the link-boy!”

  “Yes, sir. I waited on winter ending, ‘cos I didn’t reckon ‘oofing it in snow wiv’ no shoes on. Any’ow, the wagons don’t go nowhere in winter, not off the big roads.”

  “Good – that shows good sense! What do you want to do?”

  Harold was taken aback – no one had ever asked what he wanted in his whole life – he had always been told what to do while he dodged the kicks.

  “Dunno’, sir. Work. Learn ‘ow to fight. Ride a ‘orse. Kip in a warm pit at night. I dunno’ really.”

  Frederick nodded, it was all that could be expected – a ship’s boy would have been much the same faced with making any decision about his future. He called for Bosomtwi.

  “This is Harold. I would like you to take him into the stables for a month or two at first, see if he has the makings of a horseman.”

  Bosomtwi nodded, sniffed and quickly opened the door for the boy.

  “If he any good, I need a lad, isn’t it. If not, he learn to ride, anyway.”

  “Wymington, would you speak to Mrs Montague, please.”

  “Certainly, sir. Bath, clothes, food, boots and a place to sleep. I shall inform Mr Hartley as well.”

  “Thank you.”

  Horses kicked Harold. Sometimes, for a change, they stamped on his feet. He could offer them sugar and they took it eagerly, then snapped at his fingers. When he rode even the most placid of old geldings it would seek out low branches or lean into a wall. He was never anything but kind and gentle, but horses did not like him at all. Dogs loved him and the stables cat came running, tail up, to be stroked. Mrs Hartley’s donkey brayed pleadingly whenever he came in sight – but horses hated him.

  A month and he left the stables, banished before one of the big hunters could kill him.

  He had no facility with tools – the estate carpenter, thatcher and handyman had no use for him.

  “’Er do be willin’, Sir Frederick, can’t nohow say ‘er baint. But ‘er don’t know arse from elbow when it do come to doin’ owt! A good lad, tries ‘er best to be perlite an’ ‘elpful – but ‘er’s bliddy useless to I, and thass a fact!”

  Ablett took Harold out with him pigeon-shooting as a treat, the boy was so unhappy, escorted him to Sir Geoffrey’s head keeper the next morning, bade him watch.

  “Upshot is, Sir Frederick, he called his master out to have a look and they offered him a place to learn keeping. He’s only a small lad, and the fowling piece – a little twenty bore – was far too big for him and he was hitting left and right from the minute he picked it up – flighting pigeons, sir! We got no need for keepers, sir, not having cocks at walk. But Sir Geoffrey keeps I don’t know how many thousand pheasants, needs the men, and a keeper needs to clean out vermin, always has a gun with him.”

  They saw Harold frequently, marvelled at the growth he made – keepers, in the nature of things, eating a diet rich in meats – but it did not occur to them to enquire after the first, bloody, ambition he had disclosed to Wymington.

  Frederick’s strength and dexterity returned in full, the muscle rebuilding and his quickness and balance as good as ever. Chalfont tried to persuade him to learn the fence, but he was adamant that he neither wanted nor required such skills.

  “Fencing is for single combat, for honourable battle, Mr Chalfont. Not my sport, sir! Should I meet up with a swordsman in a boarding or taking a battery, say, then I shall look for Bosomtwi or Ablett to distract him while I spike him from behind, or pistol him from ten feet! There is no time to play during such occasions, sir – the fight is to be won, and won as quickly as may be.”

  He allowed Chalfont to teach him the basic parries and to show him how to thrust and recover effectively, but insisted that his main aim with a sword was to cut and slash and spread dismay, not to impress the beholder with his elegance and valour.

  The completion of the turnpike created almost immediate extra income in the villages – the markets became more easily accessible and smallholders, the few men and women awarded land at enclosure and able to keep it, found themselves able to carry vegetables to town and earn a few welcome shillings during the season, and passing carters took a pint in the local pubs, bought a bite to eat, put a little trade into the local smithies – but it also introduced a new set of problems for Bench and Vestry, wholly unforeseen and sufficient to make Frederick wish he had never thought of a new road.

  Vagrancy became a new source of expenditure and disorder – the road attracted all sorts: whole families tramping, hopefully or hopelessly seeking a Promised Land – a job, a relative, an Eldorado beyond the next horizon; half-wits and incompetents pushed out and moved on from their own homes; petty thieves and wastrels no longer tolerated and under warning from their constables; betrayed misses cast out by the righteous; feckless youths off to see the elephant – a melange of sinners and misfits, the unlucky and the careless and even the viciously criminal, all drifting up and down the pike, all without money, food or shelter.

  Paupers had a right to care and sustenance, but only in their home parish. Definition of one’s own parish was simple for those born, bred and never moved away from their parish – in past years this had encompassed almost all of the poor, the bulk of whom never travelled more than ten miles from home in the whole of their lives. Incomers to a parish, aliens, could be ordered off if they became inconvenient – the old father of a maid in service who had married at her place of work might often have a room in her cottage, but if she died young then he would be turned off to seek relief in his own parish, miles away. Travellers were generally given a meal and a bed in the local Poor House, or Work House where such existed, and were pushed out in the morning, escorted to the parish boundary, but an awkward few insisted on becoming too ill to move, or even dying, so forcing extra expense on the Poor Rate of the Parish, to the bitter objections of the local farmers.

  A greater, concomitant evil was the growth of squatter settlements – it seemed that any odd patch of worthless land now had its collection of tumbledown shacks and squalid inhabitants, lawless and churchless and wholly uncontrolled. Every lif
ted hen and missing calf, every poxed son and pregnant daughter was blamed on the squatters, not always incorrectly. In the absence of a police force of any sort – the settlements being outside of the parishes not even the local constable had any authority, or wish to become involved – the Bench was petitioned at every Quarter Sessions to amend the new lawlessness. The Bench could address the Sheriff of the County, and his master, the Lord Lieutenant, and they might, or more often might not, be able to find a squadron of dragoons or company of militia to sweep through a troublesome patch. Generally officialdom had nothing to offer, so the local landowners would encourage their bailiffs and agents to organise, behind their backs, a party of vigilantes who would burn out and disperse the local offenders, and push them a few miles down the road to the next parish but one.

  The old certainties had been destroyed by enclosure and a new order was yet to be formed, and government would take no part, being sure that its sole function was to conduct Foreign Affairs and Defence of the Realm, and collect just such taxes as were sufficient to achieve this. It was not, the politicians assured their people, the role of Government to interfere with the Ancient Liberties and Freedoms of the English People, even where such did not exist.

  Elizabeth swelled, harvest drew nigh and the rain fell, as it had throughout the decade. Prospect of yet another poor crop pushed corn prices higher across the whole country, to the satisfaction of those few farmers who managed a successful cut. The valley had three almost dry weeks in August and pulled in their best yields of barley and wheat in many years, filled the barns and their pockets.

  The fiddles tuned for the Harvest Festival – the dance and beef roast in the biggest barn on each of the estates – and Elizabeth felt her pains and took a bare twelve hours to produce a strong boy – even new-born he was felt to have his father’s nose. A week and she ventured out of seclusion, much inclined to wonder what all of the fuss was about – rather a painful process and most deplorably messy, but nonetheless not quite so traumatic as she had been led to believe.

  “I suppose he must be named George, husband?”

  “Not if you would prefer otherwise, my dear.”

  “Excellent! Robert Charles Geoffrey, I would wish. Robert for Lord Alton, so kind to us! Charles for your friend, Mr Russell, such a pleasant man despite his little peculiarities – would he stand sponsor, do you think? Geoffrey in compliment to the Taylors and because I like it! Will he go to sea, do you think?”

  “If it should be his wish, then I could find a good captain for him, certainly. I would wish to see him bred to a profession – Army or Navy, the law, even the Church, for I do not consider idleness fitting for any young man. Iain will learn his estates, but Robert will have a smaller inheritance and I should not wish to see him go the way of my brother.”

  She agreed – Frederick’s parents had said enough to make it clear that Brother George had come to a bad end – not to be desired for their own son.

  “When do you see the First Lord, Frederick?”

  “Soon – if I am to go then I no longer have excuse to delay.”

  “You must go, little though I like it – there is no rational alternative.”

  Four days later, all possibility of puerperal fever passed, he took a post-chaise and endured a three day journey through mud and torrential rain. Where the roads were new they could make a steady eight or nine miles to the hour but on the old lanes the horses were hard-pressed to maintain walking pace and had to be changed, exhausted, at every posting house, good for half a stage at most. Nothing could keep the inside of the chaise wholly dry and the rugs they wrapped round themselves smelt damp and frowsty; they endured, miserable and tired.

  The First Lord was welcoming – they had met frequently during the Season and had mutual acquaintance to discuss before turning to business.

  “Had you not come, Sir Frederick, there was a letter to be writ next week, for the Board had pencilled your name in, as it were, to command of the Trident frigate, when she finally leaves dockyard hands. She is in the private yard at Bursledon on the Hamble River – you must know the yard, it is in your country.”

  “Yes, my lord, by no means one of the worst – has built one at least of line of battle ships, has she not?”

  “The Elephant, currently in northern waters.”

  “Trident is unfamiliar to me, my lord. Is she new-built?”

  “Razee – an old sixty four. On her gun-deck that was are thirty six of twenty four pound long guns, a pair of thirty two chasers and sixteen of thirty two pound carronades, six forward and two aft on the broadside. Swivels and boat guns, of course. A broadside at close quarters of six hundred and eighty eight pounds, Sir Frederick!”

  “One could enter debate with a 74, my lord, at close quarters, with such an armament.”

  “She is old, of course, Sir Frederick, but all these 64s are very fast, and she has been well refurbished.”

  Frederick smiled and made his thanks – not all of the small two-deckers were fast, as he well knew. Too many were crank, over-gunned, under-sized remnants of a past age, but it was reasonable to hope that those selected to be rebuilt would be of the better sort, modern in design and capable of bearing a heavy burden of sail. There was nothing to be done until he had seen her, and very little then, for he must accept the command whatever her condition. To do otherwise would be grossly, and terminally, ungrateful.

  “We propose to send Trident to the Eastern Mediterranean, to Turkish waters, the Aegean and Ionian Seas in fact. There are a thousand islands there, or more, and their condition is quite impossible to describe! Some are French controlled, the bulk are Turkish, in name at least. Of the Turks some are effectively independent and Greek, others independent and Turk; some are nominally loyal to the Sublime Porte, more are truly so, but their status varies, it would seem, week on week. There are emissaries from Russia, bearing gifts; missions from France offering arms and threats; fraternal embassies from the Emperor of Morocco carrying huge sums of money. A delegation from the Vatican is talking, we understand, to local Catholic congregations, offering valuable but less mundane considerations. From the British point of view, we believe both Army and Foreign Office people are present, and we are given to understand that they have suggested naval support might be possible, although they do not talk to each other and never to us.”

  “What, precisely, would Trident be expected to do, my lord?”

  “Weaken the Turk, though never offering hostility to them – succour independents, I suspect. Destroy any French vessels and harbours, as possible. Forestall the Russians. Under no circumstances interfere with the activities of the Emperor of Morocco – we cannot feed a Mediterranean Fleet except with his active assistance. Protect English trade and obstruct all others as possible, short of hostilities, being careful of neutrals.”

  “That could be an interesting task, my lord. What plans are there for Trident’s complement?”

  “You will require four lieutenants, carrying so many guns. As well, there is to be an adviser, joining in Malta, possessed of local languages and knowledge. Manning is your problem, of course. You may be generous in midshipmen, the Board wishing you to train young gentlemen in your image, Sir Frederick. You will wish to join in a fortnight or so, perhaps eighteen days from now, I believe.”

  They considered the more technical points – Admiralty orders but due consideration to be given to the wishes of the Commander-in-Chief of the Mediterranean Fleet should any of his units coincidentally be present in his area of operations. Trident’s operational area not to be limited to the north – pursuit might take her elsewhere, for example, but the wisdom of avoiding the southern parts of the Levant where General Bonaparte’s army was engaged in a most untidy contest with all comers was stressed. There were Turks, Arabs, Navy and Army present, together with an assortment of irregulars, bandits, pirates and various looters – better far to keep out of that particular unpleasantness. The name of Sydney Smith was carefully not mentioned – too successful to su
persede, too embarrassing to acknowledge.

  “Victual exclusively out of Malta, Sir Frederick – avoid the Two Sicilies, for they will only drag you into their nasty political games – they will feed you false intelligence without second thought if it serves their purpose of the day. Their king is a fat, half-sane poltroon – and comparisons need not be drawn, thank you, sir! The queen has the intelligence to be of service but has the appetites and self-serving morality of a gutter whore. Their Court mirrors them.”

  “What of Malta, my lord? It is only recently ours. Is the harbour safe?”

  “The Knights were rotten, venal, incompetent, had become resented. The French came, were welcomed, made themselves very unpopular in short order – refusing to pay for food, wine or women. The English are heretics and intruders, but, so far, are within reason tolerated. Provided we do not offend their sensibilities too greatly they will accept us as the least evil yet. And they know that without some foreign power present the Barbary pirates will take them, for their harbour is big, protected and perfectly placed to control the Mediterranean, and anything is better than them!”

  “Offend their sensibilities, my lord?”

  “They are Catholic. Devoutly so. Half-witted chaplains from the Fleet…”