The King's Coat

by Dewey Lambdin

  “Onsley sez there’s gossip ya had to join the Navy to make somethin’ of yerself. That true?”

  Good God, I really am fucked … He nodded yes to that question, not trusting himself to speak.

  “Don’t rightly hold that against ya, lad.” Beauman smiled. “Had to come out to the Indies to make a man of meself, make my own way. Woulda gone to hell on my own back home. But, see this my way, yer a pretty fella, pretty enough to turn the girl’s poor head, but yer not the solid type o’ match I’d trust to keep her proper. There’s nothin’ goin’ to come of this. Sorry, lad. Nothin’ personal.”

  “I may not be ideal now, sir. But I’m not asking permission to marry tomorrow. I mean to gain my commission first, and there is the war still to be fought. Allow me to write her, and to call. If she finds someone more pleasing in the meantime, then that is Providence. I would not press any sort of suit until I felt I could meet your standards as a suitor, or doom her to a shabby life to suit my pleasure,” he lied, desperately glib.

  “How often you think you might get to Jamaica?”

  “Perhaps once a year, sir, at best.”

  “Hmm. Tell ya what, you make somethin’ of yerself. I’ll allow you to write. And if you get to Jamaica, you can come callin’. But you’ll not be doin’ anythin’ to disturb the peace o’ my family ’til I say I’m satisfied with yer prospects.”

  “I give you my solemn word on that, sir.”

  I know what he’s thinking, Lewrie thought. Creampot love I or Lucy will grow out of. Out of sight, out of mind, while he throws his sort of bachelor up to her. He may not know it, but we’re as good as engaged right now …

  “Good enough,” Beauman told him. “Old Onsley’s right, you’ve got bottom, boy. My advice to ya.”

  “Aye, sir?”

  “Whoever ya end up married to, never have daughters.”

  “I’ll take that to heart, Mister Beauman.” Alan smiled in relief. “May I go tell Lucy the news?”

  “Aye, run along.”

  Lucy was glowing with delight at his report, and Lady Maude was cooing and fanning herself in joy. Sir Onsley frowned a lot, said a bit how married officers were lost to the Navy, which got him a withering glare from Lady Maude, which he had to splutter his way free of by reminding her that he was a post-captain when they’d wed.

  The rest of the evening was a glimpse of Paradise itself, for Lucy told all her girl acquaintances, they told all the young men at the ball, and everyone assumed it was a much more formal arrangement than it really was. Older couples beamed at them foolishly and remarked on what a splendid couple they would be.

  On his part Alan completely forgot about his fears concerning Captain Bevan and Sir George Sinclair. With Lucy at his side they were no more than fleabites from a traveler’s bed; nothing to get exercised about. His future was assured once the war was over, and the Navy was little more than a slight aggravation to be borne until then.

  Once her father and Lucy left, Alan had no more reason to stay at the ball, so he visited the kitchens for a bundle of food to sate his now-roaring appetite. The cooks and stewards remembered him from his previous stint of duty, so he left with a substantial basket of goodies and two bottles of champagne. This he and young Carey, who had stayed behind aboard, devoured happily in the quiet darkness of their mess.

  Once in bed, he was so busy thinking on his prospects that he was still awake two hours later when Avery and Forrester staggered to their hammocks, tipsy and trying to shush each other like a pair of lamebrained housebreakers trying to smash through a wall without waking the house’s owner.

  They dropped their shoes, dropped their chest lids, clanked their dirks trying to find spare pegs, giggled, belched, farted, thumped into each other and apologized profusely, hummed their favorite tunes, slung their hammocks and tumbled out at least once with loud crashes and began to curse everything roundly. Carey found it so entertaining that he ended up shrieking with laughter at their bungling.

  And once the mess area was filled by nothing but drunken snores, Alan still lay awake, closer to contentment than he had been in two full years, listening to the ship breathe around him, and the watch bell up forward chiming the half-hour, until he too drowsed off, quite pleased with himself.

  Chapter 13

  “Passing the word for Mister Lewrie,” a Marine sentry bawled.

  Alan was aloft with Toliver, one of the bosun’s mates, checking over the foret’gallant mast after it had been hoisted into place to see if the standing rigging was set up properly. He scrambled down to the gangway and jogged aft to answer the summons, passing Forrester on the way. Forrester grinned evilly at him as he passed and gave him a sniff that Alan had come to know as a sign of complete satisfaction.

  Damme, what does that bacon-fed thatch-gallows know that I don’t? he wondered. He looked too happy for my liking. Oh God, is this when he starts getting his own back?

  He instantly had visions of being transferred to the flagship and being triced up to a grating for daring to enter the Navy, or for offending Sir George or Forrester.

  “Calling for me?” Lewrie asked the sentry.

  “Cap’n wants ta see yer, sir.”

  “Aye, thank you.”

  There was little he could do to make himself more presentable in a stained working-rig uniform. He straightened his neckcloth, tucked in his shirt so a large tar stain would not show, and went below and aft to the passage to Treghues’ cabins.

  “You wished to see me, sir?”

  Treghues was seated in his coach, the dining space to starboard of his bed cabin. He was having his breakfast, neatly dressed, freshly shaved and surrounded by good-quality furniture and plate. His cabin servant bustled to pour him a second cup of coffee.

  “You may go, Judkin.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  Oh shit, I’m in the quag now, Alan thought as the servant left, closing the fragile door behind him.

  “I had a most distressing conversation with Captain Bevan and Sir George about you last night, Lewrie,” Treghues told him, frowning over his beef and eggs. “Is it true that you did not join the Navy willingly?”

  “Aye, sir,” Alan said after a long moment.

  “I had heard talk of a young lady, so I naturally thought it was a star-crossed affair. But now I am told that you were banished before a magistrate could have you up on a charge of raping your own sister.” The prim Treghues hissed.

  “That’s … that’s not strictly true, sir.”

  “Either it is or it isn’t. There’s no such thing as half-rape, boy. Any more than anyone can be half-pregnant. Is it true?”

  “If you would let me try to explain, sir … it’s not a thing that is ‘yes’ or ‘no’—” Alan equivocated.

  “I can only believe that some money changed hands for Bevan to have allowed you to wear the king’s coat,” Treghues said. “I put that down to Bevan’s cupidity. Too long in the Impress Service could ruin anyone. And no doubt he must have lied to your first captain, if not offered him money to take you on … on your family’s behalf.”

  “Captain Bales was aware that I had been banished, sir. In my first interview he had a letter from our family solicitor, Mister Pilchard, and he didn’t…”

  “Who are your people, anyway?”

  “Sir Hugo Willoughby, sir.”

  “The one in St. James’s?” Treghues appeared to be shocked.

  “Aye, sir.” Damme, is Father that infamous?

  “And you’re his git? No wonder you’re such a black rogue. That’s sweet. So they gave you a false name and foisted you off onto the first poor captain that was fitting out? That’s a wicked sort of business.” Treghues scowled.

  “It was no false name, sir. Sir Hugo never married my mother, Elizabeth Lewrie. He adopted me, but never really made me one of his.”

  “He and Lord Sandwich and Dashwood are all of a set. Hell-Fire Club, balum rancum bucks without the fear of God. Sacreligious bastards. And they push you on me!”

>   “Sir, I must explain—”

  “How dare you stand there fouling the uniform with your evil stink,” Treghues ranted with prim, outraged passion. “Trailing your false colors and hoping to avoid the gibbet by joining the Navy—”

  “It’s all a lying packet, sir,” Alan said, raising his voice.

  “Don’t you dare sass back to me. I’ll have you flogged for it. I’ve a good mind to do that, anyway, and send you in chains to the flag.”

  “How else am I to get to say my side of it, sir?”

  “What side could you possibly present, after forcing your foul self on a gentle, virginal girl, your own flesh and blood?”

  “Belinda Willoughby has the shortest heels in London, sir,” Alan said loudly. “She spent two weeks luring me into her bed, and then up turns Sir Hugo, my half brother Gerald, who’s known for being a windward-passage fellow, our solicitor, the vicar from our parish, and a catch-fart with a pistol. Very damned convenient, if you ask me. And no justice was ever called, no constable of the watch, no one, except for a Navy captain.”

  “Don’t you dare shout at me, damn you,” Treghues said, rising.

  “You have heard what I have said, sir?” Alan asked, numb to the possibility that he was about to be lashed and dis-rated. “Does it not sound suspicious to you, sir?”

  “What motive could they possibly have had?” Treghues said, showing that at least some of it had sunk in but still on a tear at the affront to him personally, as though the inventor of original sin had just pissed liquid fire in his coffee.

  “I was forced to sign a paper that pledged me to disavow any hope of inheritance from my mother’s estate, sir, though they told me she had none and had died a prostitute in a parish poorhouse. There was never any talk of my mother or her family, so I have no way of knowing if her people were still alive, or if they had property.”

  “Then why should they go to such lengths? Why did Sir Hugo not just disown you and throw you out into the street?”

  “I have no idea, sir. I have been thinking on it for nigh on a year and a half, and still can find no reason for such a deception.”

  “But you were caught. Not just in her room, I’m told, but bare as you were born, in the middle of…” Evidently Treghues could not bring himself to say the word.

  “Had you ever met her, sir, you would be tempted yourself.”

  “But your own sister, the last of your line.”

  “No, sir. My half sister. Belinda Willoughby, not Lewrie.”

  Treghues sat down, flung himself into his chair and sipped at his coffee, brow creased, while Alan stood at attention, breathing hard.

  “And you have been totally disowned? No allowance or any support?”

  “Mister Pilchard sends me an hundred guineas a year, sir. And they gave Captain Bevan money to buy my kit. I am to never go back to London—”

  “Does he! That does not sound like a man so ill-disposed to his son. No, Mister Lewrie, you’ve spun a pretty tale, but I fear you’d make a better novelist than Fielding. Thank God, the world is changing, and all the avarice and lust of the last forty years is being swept away by a new morality. There are now God-fearing people unwilling to put up with, or condone, the openly sinful doings that characterized our society in past years.”

  My God, is Treghues some kind of leaping Methodist? Alan wondered, listening to his captain rant.

  “I cannot help who my father was, or in what environment I was raised, sir, but since joining the Navy I have put all that behind me. Am I not a better than average midshipman, sir?”

  “I’ve a good mind to write Sir Onsley Matthews and inform him just what a total wastrel and Godless rake you really are,” Treghues went on as though he had not heard a word. “Had I leave to do so, I would turn you out of this ship at once, at once, do you hear, Mister Lewrie?”

  “On what grounds, sir?” Alan asked, mild as possible.

  “Don’t play the sea lawyer with me, boy. I do not want you in my command any more than the Navy should have wanted you. And at the first opportunity I shall make it my God-fearing duty to make sure that both Desperate, and the Sea Service, shall be a much cleaner place, without your foul presence. Until that time I shall want to see only the most obedient and circumspect behavior from you, or I shall make you sorry that you were ever born. Now get out of my sight.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  I was your pride and joy, you priggish bastard, as long as you thought you were making Sir Onsley happy, Alan thought miserably. But now you have a new master, you’ll cut your cloth to suit Sir George.

  Alan stumbled out the entryway and up to the quarterdeck to the taffrail, as far away from everyone as possible. There was a fair wind that morning, and English Harbor sparkled.

  The breeze that came to him was full of good smells, of green and luscious growing things from shore, the tang of salt and iodine and tidal odors from the strand, raw wood from the dockyard, and the scent of pitch and hot pine-tar as some ship was repaired to windward. It should have been a delightful day in which to be alive, but it was most definitely not.

  That was one of the drawbacks of a man-of-war; the lack of privacy when you had to let go and drop to the deck and weep, not only weep but thrash, curse, scream and pound your fists on something at the unfairness of life until you were spent. But no one was going to walk around you until you were through and then ask if you felt better for doing it.

  So Alan stared at the shore and gripped the intricately carved taffrail until his hands were white. There was nothing he could say or do in the face of Treghues’ moralizing that would make a difference. He was going to become a leper. Treghues had made it clear that he wanted him gone as soon as the Navy could let him, and would also hound him from the Fleet. A captain set the tone for his ship. How long would it be, Alan wondered, before Treghues’ open dislike spread to Mister Monk, Railsford, Peck, Dorne, Cheatham and the rest? Perhaps even David and little Carey would start walking wide to avoid him.

  Well, he had not planned to make the Navy a career, anyway. He had hoped to make Lucy Beauman, and her father’s money, a career, but even being so close to that was no balm for his shattered spirits. Much as he at times hated the Navy, he did not relish being thrown out of it.

  If he were to leave the Navy it would be at his own time, and with his pride and his prize money intact, not as a rejected midshipman but at least as a half-pay lieutenant, which would allow him to hold up his head in public.

  And there was his perverse streak to consider—loathe the life of a sailor as much as he wanted to, curse the demands of the Navy and the deprivations one had to suffer, it was the only thing that he was good at! He could roister and romp with the ladies, play buck of the first head in a company of fellow-cocks, dance, drink, wench, run wild in the streets and spend money with the best of them, but that was not a career without a peer’s purse. He could navigate as well as any—even with a sextant, one hundred miles out of your reckoning was considered fairly accurate—he could stand a deck watch, could hand, reef and steer, handle a small boat, could handle all the paperwork, much as he despised it, had learned enough to make a good sailor and a fair midshipman, and he was very good with weapons. Where else was he going to be able to do all that? After the Navy, clerking for some firm would be damned dull. No one in his right mind would go for a soldier, and he couldn’t afford to buy someone’s commission. There was nothing suitable for a gentleman that he could do, or hope to undertake at eighteen years old, with no civilian connections.

  He would have to accomplish something, soon, something that he could point to that even Treghues could not demean, that would gain him so much favorable comment that he would be safe in the Navy.

  God Almighty, listen to what I’m saying … I’m beginning to sound like I want to stay in and be made “post” …

  Even if that was his goal, and he seriously doubted his own sanity if it was, he still had four and a half years as a young gentleman in training before he could stan
d for a lieutenancy. The rules called for six years on ship’s books, two of those years as a midshipman or a master’s mate, and proof of age no less than twenty. In another ship he might be chosen as a master’s mate, which had a salary to it and would lead quicker to a commission, but would not Treghues’ opinion of him follow him in his records? He had seen other midshipmen of twenty, thirty, had heard of men in their forties still midshipmen—too good seamen to be cast out but unable to pass the exam, or having passed, had no luck or interest working for them to obtain a berth as an officer.

  Damme, but this is a hard life, he thought miserably. But why should I expect it to be fair? I’m not stupid. Would it be better for me to fight back by being cruel and unfair myself, more than I am now, at any rate? Is that the way to succeed?

  Chapter 14

  Desperate was at sea, reaching north with a soldier’s wind on her starboard beam. For once she had company as she followed the thirty-two-gun frigate Amphion, and was in turn trailed by two sloops of war, Commander Ozzard’s Vixen, and another sloop of war named Roebuck. They had sailed north from English Harbor after making their offing, destined for Anegada, a low sand-and-coral island at the eastern end of the British Virgins. Once there, they had to be careful to avoid the Horseshoe Reefs, where hundreds of ships had come to grief over the years. Commander Treghues had sealed orders, which he had not shared with anyone as of yet, but the presence of four cruising-type warships in company bespoke a major effort of some kind, and rumors were rife in every compartment.

  Rumors were also flying about what Treghues had said to Lewrie in his cabins. The captain’s clerk and steward were silent about the matter, mercifully, and Treghues was also tight-lipped, but it did not stop the wildest speculations.

  People were indeed curious, and expanded on the slightest hints. Treghues behaved as if Lewrie were not there. He paid not the slightest attention to him during the course of his duties, had absolutely no comment about his navigation work when he inspected the midshipmen’s slates at noon sights, indeed barely glanced at Lewrie’s, and as Amphion led them around Horseshoe Reefs into the lee of Anegada at dawn of their third day at sea it was Carey who had charge of the leadsmen in the foremast chains, Forrester who had charge of the cutter that probed ahead of them, and Avery by the wheel, leaving Alan to bide his time restlessly aft by the taffrail with a signalman.