A Fine Retribution

by Dewey Lambdin

  “Good kitchens?” Yeovill wondered. “Be a treat, someone else doing the cooking for a day or two.”

  A footman lad dashed past, dressed in black “ditto” suitings, white shirt and neck-stock, and a red waist-coat, a miniature version of the butler, out to direct Deavers and Dasher and the waggoner to an alley entrance round the corner. His passage excited the dog, who began whining and yelping, straining at his leash.

  Lewrie’s father, Sir Hugo, appeared at the top of the stairs and began his descent with his butler in tow, and both of them looking perturbed.

  “Well!” Sir Hugo said in a chary bark of a welcome. “You’ve come at last, have you? And brought a circus?”

  “Good to see you, too, Father,” Lewrie said in greeting, used to Sir Hugo’s thin hospitality by then.

  “How many of you are there, then?” Sir Hugo asked as he reached the foyer, and offered a brief handshake to his son. “And how long are you expecting to stay?”

  “Myself and five others, Father,” Lewrie told him, “and I hope to find other lodgings right after I settle things at Admiralty.”

  “You’ve brought your bloody cat?” Sir Hugo scoffed, peering at the cage. “I see you’re sensible enough to get yourself a proper pet. But, I’ll not have your dog piddling or scatting on my good carpets.

  “Five others, is it?” Sir Hugo said with a scowl. “I see only three.”

  “My cabin steward, Pettus, I believe you know from earlier, but allow me to name to you my Cox’n, Liam Desmond, and my cook, James Yeovill,” Lewrie said. “Men, my Father, Sir Hugo St. George Willoughby. There are two more with my dray waggon, unloading its content into your coach house, temporarily, a man from my boat crew, Michael Deavers, and my cabin servant, Tom Dasher.”

  “Unloading…?” Sir Hugo said with a start. “Did ye loot some prize and fetch it all here? Anything the Customs men or the Police will come asking about?”

  “My cabin furnishings, wine store, things like that,” Lewrie shrugged off. “Some of it might have to come inside for safekeeping, but…”

  “If it’s only, as you say, for a few days, I’d suppose,” Sir Hugo harrumphed. “Might you be able to deal with it, Harwell?”

  “After training Guards recruits, I am used to chaos, Sir Hugo,” the butler said with a smug expression on his stern phyz. “Though, perhaps for the few days Sir Alan’s entourage might assist the running of the house, to ease the burden on the staff?”

  “But of course, Mister Harwell,” Lewrie offered.

  “Your room is prepared, Sir Alan,” Harwell said, “and your man can see to you. Spare rooms belowstairs are available for your men, though they may have to share two, or three, to a room.”

  “Let’s be about it, then,” Sir Hugo declared, as if that particular burden on his household was solved. “Come up to the drawing room, my boy, and take your ease.”

  “After I’ve paid my coachman and waggoner,” Lewrie said, pulling out his coin-purse. “Be up in a moment.”

  *   *   *

  Finally shed of his hat and sword belt, Lewrie trotted up the stairs to the parlour and joined his father, who was seated on a settee near the book cases on the far end of the spacious and richly appointed room. Someone had let Bisquit off his leash (after a judicious allowance outside to void his bowels and bladder) and Sir Hugo was making a fuss over him, making Bisquit’s tail whip. Chalky was hunkered up on a deep windowsill cushion, tail wrapped round his forelegs. Like all cats, he did not deal well with new and strange surroundings.

  “Anything good in your wine store?” Sir Hugo asked. Perhaps he was mellowed by Bisquit’s presence and affectionate response to being petted, but the old man almost seemed pleasant for a rare once.

  “There’s two ankers of good port, some Spanish or Portuguese sparkling wines,” Lewrie ticked off as he took a seat in a wing-back chair across from his father, “but the bulk of it’s un-distinguished … drinkable and pleasant, but nothing grand. I’ve a crock or two of American corn whisky, some ‘liberated’ French brandy, quite decent…”

  “What sort of corn?” Sir Hugo asked, looking up from the dog.

  “Indian corn, what we’d call maize,” Lewrie told him. “Aged in oak barrels several years. They call it bourbon whisky.”

  “Like Scottish whisky, or Irish?” Sir Hugo frowned.

  “Different grains, different flavour,” Lewrie said. “You ought try it.”

  “I’ll stick to brandy, thankee,” Sir Hugo dismissively scoffed. “The whiskys I’ve tasted leave me in mind of sucking on wood chips. So … you’ve lost your ship, have you?”

  Lewrie explained how and why, and how much he regretted the loss, even though Sapphire had less than a year, at best, left in her active commission before he would have had to leave her, anyway.

  “The thing that irks the most, though,” Lewrie said, sounding wistful, “is seeing all my skilled gunners scattered to the wide like so much chaff. God, they were good, and accurate, too! We took that big French frigate we faced to pieces with aimed fire … her quarterdeck and helm, her carronades, lower masts, and roundshot and grape right into her gun-ports, at long musket shot, double long musket shot, not hull-to-hull.” Lewrie explained his experiments with crude sights cut into muzzles and breeching rings.

  Perhaps the reassuring sound of Lewrie’s voice at last calmed Chalky, for he slunk off the cushioned window seat and came to Lewrie’s knee to mew for a snug place in his lap, and some comforting pets.

  “What? Using cannons like those Baker rifles they’re issuing to the Rifle regiments?” Sir Hugo said with a dubious snort. “Never heard the like. And they didn’t charge you with defacing the King’s artillery?”

  “It can be done, we proved it,” Lewrie declared. “Oh, not at any great range, or with a high sea runnin’, but it can work.”

  “Well, if you say so,” Sir Hugo finally allowed. “That … cat of yours, there. Black and white, as I recall?”

  “That was Toulon,” Lewrie said, stroking the cat, “this’un is Chalky. Toulon passed away on the way to Cape Town, years ago, and Chalky came off a French prize during the Quasi-War the Yankee Doodles had with the French. He’s of an age, now, too.”

  “The dog can be let out into the walled back garden, but what will it do when caught short?” Sir Hugo asked, giving the cat a dubious glance.

  “I brought a barrel of sand, and his litter box,” Lewrie said, knowing that his father disliked cats, and secretly enjoying the man’s discomfort. “He’s used to it, ain’t ye, puss’ums?”

  “And that will be in your room, hear me?” Sir Hugo snapped. “So you can spare me, and the rest of the house, the smells.”

  “Of course,” Lewrie agreed with a chuckle.

  “So, Admiralty tomorrow, then … what?” Sir Hugo asked as the dog at last padded away to explore the parlour, giving everything some good sniffs.

  “Well, I hear that I’m to be dined in at the Madeira Club, to celebrate,” Lewrie speculated aloud, “and, I expect that I might get about town to look up old friends, do some shopping…”

  “Pity about the club,” Sir Hugo said, “we’ve bought up the two houses either side for expansion, but you may have brick dust in your soup. Workmen knocking out walls, connecting hallways, plasterers and painters in from dawn to dusk, carpenters hammering and sawing away to refurbish the new rooms. At least the wine cellar is still good. But, the question is, how long might it be ’twixt your old ship and a new one?”

  “Impossible t’say,” Lewrie said with a confident shrug. “Can’t be too long, after all the folderol the papers made of our fight. They can’t keep a successful Captain ashore more than a month or so.”

  “About that,” Sir Hugo said, squirming about to cross his legs. “Soon as I got your letter from Gibraltar, I spoke with my solicitor, and he’s spoken with a reputable land agent about finding you a place t’hang your hat ’til the Navy sends you back to sea. At first I thought a set of rooms would do, but now, with yo
ur menagerie and all, perhaps a house might be necessary. Something to let for a time, and not too dear?”

  “A house?” Lewrie gawped. The idea of taking an entire house had never occurred to him. Between ships, he’d had his rented house and small farm at Anglesgreen, a set of rooms for himself and one man-servant early on, the Madeira Club, or short stays in public lodging like Willis’s Rooms or some other hotel. But, to let a whole house, and for how long month-to-month, and all the furniture necessary to make it even comfortable for ancient Spartans or Catholic monks would be an expensive undertaking, and a huge commitment. To maintain a house, one needed servants, chamber maids, a scullery maid to assist Yeovill in the kitchens, a maid-of-all-work, a footman or two, even a butler? Good Lord!

  “Hadn’t thought of a house,” Lewrie all but croaked in alarm. “Oh, if I eventually retired, or…”

  “You can afford it, surely,” Sir Hugo tossed off, rising to go to a side table to pour himself a glass of Rhenish. “I read that the Navy’s bought in the ships your squadron took at prizes.”

  “Aye, they did,” Lewrie agreed. “I’ve £3,900 due me, and from our other captures … well, all told, I’m almost £50,000 to the good.”

  “Egad!” Sir Hugo barked. “You’ve come home a ‘chicken nabob’! John Company wallahs leave India with that much.”

  “Nowhere as well as you, but…” Lewrie said, ready to preen his fingernails on his coat lapels.

  I never did learn how much you made away with, he thought with amusement. His father would never reveal what his time with the East India Company army had earned him, but Sir Hugo had cleared all of his debtors once back in England, had dangled so much gold under the late Uncle Phineas Chiswick’s nose to purchase his country estate of three hundred and twenty acres at Anglesgreen (uncomfortably close to his son, wife, and family!), had run up his odd one-level house more like an Indian bungalow than a proper country house, and bought this grand house in one of London’s most fashionable districts, even grander than his old place in St. James’s Square (though that’un had not been on the good side).

  “Hah!” his father hooted in wicked mirth. “Not even close! A glass, would you?” he offered with a wave of the cut-glass decanter.

  “Aye,” Lewrie said, getting to his feet, still numbed by the thought of taking an actual house. Why, it was almost like admitting that he would never go back to sea!

  “You’ll have this place once I’m gone, and you’d have to spend money to maintain it properly, at any rate,” Sir Hugo said as he poured Lewrie a glass. “Can’t spend your whole life like a vagabond or a Gypsy tinker. Oh, you’ll have my money, my sums in the Three Percents, and my investments, to help keep this place, and the farm, up to snuff, but … now you can afford it, you might as well get used to being a homeowner. Or someone’s renter, anyway,”

  “Grow up, d’ye mean?” Lewrie sourly asked.

  “Something like that, hee hee,” Sir Hugo agreed.

  “Seems a shame,” Lewrie told him, “to furnish a place, hire on house staff, for only two months or so.”

  “Well, there’s always second-hand goods a’plenty available,” his father brushed off, “half London’s in the process of selling up and moving in or out. Perhaps the land agent can find a place that’s already furnished. As for staff, I use a good agent for that, and with half the better houses closed for the Summer, and so many people laid off, I’m sure that maids and such would be grateful for a few months of employment, with room and board all found.”

  “Excuse me, Sir Hugo,” the butler, Harwell, said as he entered the parlour, “but dinner is ready.”

  “Ah, excellent!” Sir Hugo said, tossing off his glass of wine. “My son’s people are settled in?”

  “Their rooms assigned, and sitting down to dinner with the rest of the staff, this moment, sir,” Harwell assured him.

  “There will be roast beef, the ‘Fatted Calf’ as it were, this evening,” Sir Hugo promised as they headed for the dining room, “but for now, I trust that roast chicken will suffice, my boy?”

  “Topping!” Lewrie said. One thing could be counted upon; his father’s hospitality might be lacking, but he always set a good table!

  CHAPTER NINE

  Damme, but this feels good! Lewrie told himself after he entered the courtyard behind the curtain wall at Admiralty, and for a rare once feeling welcome. Admittedly it helped that he wore his medals for St. Vincent and Camperdown, and the star and sash of his knighthood, so that may have helped the other officers in the courtyard take notice, wonder among themselves just who he was, and then, aided by one or two of his acquaintance, realise who he was and break into smiles of recognition, doffing their hats in salute as he neared the entry.

  What respectful acknowledgement and hero-worship there may have been ended there, as he was greeted by the tiler on duty, typically an older pensioner who might have attained Bosun’s rank and who might have been impressed by a Nelson, but few others.

  “Ah, Cap’um sir, you’ve an appointment?” a grizzled old fellow enquired with a wary squint. “If you don’t, you’ll have a long wait today, for it’s arseholes and elbows in the Waiting Room, and even the queue at the tea cart’s long as a main course yard.”

  “I do, for Ten,” Lewrie informed him as the tiler held the door for him.

  “That’s no guarantee, busy as they are today, sir,” the oldster almost whinnied, “but go on in if you’ve a mind.”

  It never changed, Lewrie bemusedly thought as he went inside and gave the infamous Waiting Room a quick once-over in search of a chair; There’ll not be a single man I know here t’yarn with, and I’ll lay any odds there’ll be that Midshipman drooling a rope o’ snot, lookin’ for a berth the last five years!

  “You’ve an appointment, sir?” one of the assistant clerks asked.

  “Captain Sir Alan Lewrie, for Ten this morning,” Lewrie said.

  “Oh! Captain Lewrie, sir!” the clerk perked up, sounding louder than the usual hushed tone required, and perking the interest of the officers and Mids already seated in the Waiting Room. “Of course, sir. I shall convey your presence to the First Secretary, Mister Pole. Do make yourself comfortable, sir, the wait should not be too long.”

  A Midshipman in his late twenties sprang from a leather-padded chair (which he should not have occupied if he had any sense) and gave it to Lewrie, with a grin, a bob of his head, and a cheery “congratulations on your victory, sir!” There was even the latest copy of The Naval Chronicle to thumb through. Lewrie shammed extreme interest in the publication, and plastered his best “stoic hero” expression on his phyz, but secretly enjoyed the humm-umm of conversation that his arrival caused, wishing that his chary father could witness the show, and realise that the only son he claimed as his was not a total pest!

  The wait was, indeed, a short one, for another assistant clerk, the one that Lewrie had dubbed the “bad news boy” long before, as opposed to the other one he’d called the “happy-making clerk”, announced his name, and that Mr. Pole would see him.

  *   *   *

  “My dear Captain Lewrie,” Pole said as he entered that worthy’s offices abovestairs, “Sir Alan if I may, my heartiest congratulations on your defeat of four French frigates at one go, sir!”

  “Well, I had the assistance of my squadron’s captains,” Lewrie said with the expected modesty, “though I will own that it was a rough-and-tumble fight, a better one than one can expect from the French.”

  “A splendid action, Sir Alan, simply splendid,” Mr. Pole gushed, and went so far as to shake Lewrie’s hand before waving him to a seat. “A battle that, I gather from the latest reports from Captain Chalmers, completely dissuaded the French from sortying a second squadron to interfere with his operations against their supplying their forces in Spain by sea.”

  “I trust my replacement is still reaping a grand harvest along the North coast of Spain?” Lewrie asked as he crossed his legs and laid his hat in his lap.

  “
I fear that your previous success has daunted the French investment in the endeavour, Sir Alan,” Pole told him as he took a seat behind his desk, “with your previous squadron’s numbers expanded, and no warships to protect them, but … still a decent harvest. There are plans in mind, to be implemented later, for an even greater naval presence in those waters, and even staging some raids ashore to draw more of the French army in Spain away from Sir Arthur Welleseley’s operations.”

  “Wish I was there t’see that!” Lewrie said with some heat. “When I worked off the Andalusian coast two years, ago, I had the use of two companies of soldiers, my Marines and an armed landing party of sailors to raise merry Hell.”

  “Ah, and so I do now recall, Sir Alan,” Pole said with a knowing nod. “Pity about your ship, the ah … Sapphire, though. But, you must take care not to go about breaking things, what?”

  Christ, are you a comedian, too? Lewrie thought, willing himself to keep his face straight.

  “The real pity was losing my highly experienced gunners, Mister Pole,” Lewrie said, instead. “Has anyone determined what use might be made of her? She might’ve been a slow’un, but she was a good ship.”

  “I do believe there is talk of turning her over to the Transport Board, once her lower mainmast is replaced,” Pole said with an uncaring shrug. “The fifty-gun ship has had her day, if she ever had one, that is. There were never more than a dozen of them in active commission at one time. No, the sixty-four is more suitable for overseas duties, and as convoy escorts. Eighteen-pounders on the upper gun-decks, instead of twelves, and with more twenty-four-pounders on the lower gun-decks, as well. And, the longer hull needed to mount more guns on each deck translates to a longer, finer waterline; hence more speed.”

  “I must admit, though, Mister Pole, that I dearly miss my days in fast frigates,” Lewrie said, wondering if a hint in that direction might get him back aboard a Fifth Rate 38.

  “Oh, I fear there are an hundred Captains junior to you wishing the same thing, Sir Alan,” the First Secretary said with what passed for a chuckle. “You may be too senior for frigates, by now. And, your experience commanding … ehm, two squadrons by this point would preclude a frigate command,” he added, referring to a file on his desk.