A King's Commander

by Dewey Lambdin

  Caroline ran the farm better than most men, presented him with a clean, orderly, well-run household as gracious, as stylish, as any great-house in England. Though there had not been time to see it, she swore that the gardens, the new furnishings, the finally finished salon and bedchambers for guests, were marvels. Everything Caroline turned her hand to was marvelous; everyone said so! Since their first tumbledown gatehouse home on New Providence, she’d been a wonder when it came to housewifery, at hosting—a spectacular blend of practical frugality when called for, a commonsensical North Carolina plantation domesticity, allied with a rich planter’s, a rich squire’s, easy and noble airs.

  A sensible woman, well-read and so easy to talk to, about silly things, about matters of import beyond the stillroom, nursery, and bloody fashion! Tongue-in-cheek waggish, she could be, too; a grown woman’s wry and witty waggishness, not the prattlings of some girlish chit fresh in her first Season in Society, still redolent of milk-pap and primer-level humor.

  Light brown, sandy-blond hair, still distressed into stylish witches’ ringlets, for “à la victime” was still all the “go”; a style that bared a graceful but strong neck and shoulders.

  And I’ve cheated on her? he wondered; to himself, of course! Why, a man’d be a total . . . !

  “It’s time, I fear, beloved.” He sighed heavily. “Else we’d never, and . . .”

  “I know,” Caroline whispered, patting the broad dark blue lapels of his new uniform coat. One last stroke of her gloved hand on his cheek. One last proper, public, buss . . . soft and fleeting on the lips, at a proper distance at the entry-port gate. An incline of her head for a departing bow. A doff of his new gold-laced hat with the wide gold tape about the brim so new it hadn’t gone verdigris in salt air yet.

  She accepted his help into the bosun’s chair. One last squeeze of adoring fingers, as they had together once before, so long ago, at Charleston, after he’d evacuated her family from the impending Rebel takeover of Wilmington . . . twelve bloody years ago, and a bit, Alan marveled in reverie! Winter o’ ’81, and Fated t’be husband an’ wife e’en then? Damned if we didn’t both know it, too! Straightaway!

  Then, up and away, to a falsetto squeal of the stay-tackle’s blocks, the creak of the main-course yard as it swung her outboard of Jester ’s hull to dangle over the buoy-tender that was below the mainmast chain platform.

  Down there, Hugh was squirming against Mrs. Cony to crane and see everything about a ship getting underway. Sewallis . . .

  Poor, sad Sewallis, Lewrie thought, still doffing his hat to them all, finding something new to be rueful about as he attempted to recall how much attention he’d really given the lad.

  Prim as a parson, face reddened by wind and emotion, and about as screwed up as a hanged spaniel’s—looking just about that happy, too! Slim little scholar’s hands clasped tight below his waistcoat as if in supplication.

  Sophie de Maubeuge, dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief, too tearful (thank bloody Christ!) to recall her earthly savior’s— ahem—Fall from Grace! And pray God it don’t suddenly come to her, either, Lewrie asked his Maker most earnestly! Poor chit; not a relative left alive, either guillotined—or killed in that last sea battle that got me this ship as prize. Fate’s been slamming her doors on Sophie’s fingers everywhere she turns. Titled aristocrat— slam. Marryin’ Charles de Crillart? Slam, he was killed when we took Jester. Now she’s off the ship for a strange house in a strange new country. Catholic convent girl. Slam, slam, slam. Have to pretend to be—or learn to pretend to be—the same as any country-raised English girl. Go for Church of England in a year’r two . . . if she has any sense at all.

  God save her; in my house? Part o’ my family? He shuddered suddenly. Poor little mort! Nigh a daughter, to the likes o’ me?

  “Good-bye!” he called down, once Caroline was safely settled on a thwart amidships of the sturdy buoy-tender. “Write often, as will I! All of you! You mind what I say, Sewallis?” he cried, meaning to offer the lad a crumb at the last, to atone. “I wish to hear all about your progress. And your puppies! They should be good hunters, by the time I’m back, hey?”

  “Uhm, excuse me, sir, but . . .” Lieutenant Knolles interrupted with a sorrowful cough into his fist. “There’s a veer to the wind, and . . .”

  “I saw, Mister Knolles,” Lewrie replied from the corner of his mouth, still posed at the bulwarks with a gay grin plastered on his phyz for his family. “Hands to stations, then. Heave us in to short stays.”

  A Marine drummer began a roll. A fiddle screeched as one of the idlers tried his tuning and sought the proper key. Spithead nightingales began to peep, as newly warranted Boatswain Porter and his Bosun’s Mate Will Cony, both off that ill-starred Cockerel frigate, piped the commands for stations for leaving harbor, and up-anchor.

  A precious, breathless moment more, as the buoy-tender’s oars-men stroked the boat away, clear of Jester ’s side. “Give way, together!” her midshipman called from the stern sheets and tiller-bar. One moment more to lift his cocked hat in salute to kith and kin, then put it firmly back upon his head and turn, dismissing them, as he must, and stride purposefully to the center of the quarterdeck.

  His quarterdeck!

  He let out a heavy, lip-puffing sigh that bespoke both his impatience, and his relief. Swung his arms and clapped his hands before him unconsciously, to release a scintilla of how tautly he’d forced himself to pose, this last day in harbor.

  Relief, that he’d not blown the gaff. Relief, that, no matter how dear he cherished them all, he was off to sea, and they were no longer the center of his universe. Not when a greater, wider world awaited.

  Impatience, of a certainty, to be off and doing in that greater world, which was now filled with strife and the stink of gunpowder; in a proper ship, well-armed and able. A ship he’d already proved on the passage home, which could take the worst of the Bay of Biscay gales and swim as proud as any 5th-Rate frigate. Fast, sleek, with a clean entry and forefoot; not so fine as to bury under opposing waves, but cleave them and ride up and over. Deep enough in draught to grip the seas, resist slippage to leeward; long enough on her waterline to tear across the seas like a racehorse. Wide enough in beam to carry her artillery and stores safely, to be sea-kindly as well as fast . . .

  And for himself—for the first time in his career, he would command a real warship, not a gun ketch converted from a bomb vessel, nor a hostilities-only, hired armed brig or dispatch schooner. This marvelous Sloop of War was three hundred-eighty tons, eighteen-gunned, a French corvette—a swanlike and lovely three-masted miniature frigate!

  And he was a step closer to post-captain’s rank, when he could be eligible for command of a true frigate, a rated ship. Crews called the commander appointed over them in any warship their captain. Now, as an Admiralty-confirmed commander, he was uniformed almost like a true post-captain, and was a post-captain in all but name.

  White breeches and hose, white waistcoat and shirt, legs now encased from the knees down in a spanking-new pair of Hessian boots. He could not resist the temptation of having the London shop sew on tiny gold-fringed tassels. A dark blue coat, with a dark-blue stand-up collar and broad blue lapels, instead of a lieutenant’s white ones. There were two bands of gold lace encircling his cuffs, set with three gilt fouled-anchor buttons. The collar, front, top, and bottom, bore a wide band of gold lace; as did the two outside pocket flaps, along with even more set-in-three gilt buttons. The lapels’ outer edges, and tops and bottom seams, were gold-laced, and nine gilt buttons to either lapel allowed it to be worn open, or closed in foul weather.

  Another thing to rue, he thought suddenly. Going to London to assure his confirmation, and smarm his way through the junior clerks below-stairs, the basement moles who had pored over all his records of service, “tsk-tsk-ing” over every undotted I or slovenly crossed T.

  Then off to Coutts’s Bank with prize-money certificates, off to see his solicitor, Matthew Mountjoy, who handled his affairs as
hore; both the farm and his dealings with the financial side of the Admiralty—and his creditors. Feeling relief, and guilt, that he was called by duty from the bosom of his family after only one night with them in hired lodgings in Portsmouth. And before any trace of his affair with Phoebe showed on his face!

  The pleasures of shopping, like a wealthy gentleman, free of a demand upon his time. Of course, he needed new hats from Lock’s, new full-dress and undress coats, pristine white breeches and waistcoats, shoes and boots—that was required! Pistols, too, from Manton; his had gone down with Zélé. A new sea chest in which to store all his new finery . . . and a new sword.

  He’d have a Gill’s, no other. Wilkinson was all right, he thought, but a Gill’s he’d had before, and it had never failed him. Until he’d been forced to surrender it to that puffed up, piss-proud young Frog, Colonel Napoleone Bonaparte. Oh, there was the slim, straight rapierlike smallsword he’d taken from the French captain, when he’d taken Jester— back when she was named Sans Culottes. But it was much too ornate, a bit too slim and elegant a blade, fit for full-dress occasions, not a real bare-knuckle brawl. He wanted a fighting sword, and that was what he’d found.

  It was a Gill’s—at thirty-one, he sensed he had already developed a conservative streak, and some positively rigid prejudices—less elegant than his lost one, but more fit for the melee. His old hanger had been slimmer, a true gentleman’s “hunting sword,” slightly curved. His new blade, the cutler had told him, was patterned upon a French grenadier’s hanger. The blade was wider along its entire length, a tad thicker in cross-section, and only slightly curved; much less like a Light Cavalry saber than most, with all but the first two inches before the guard honed razor-sharp, and the first eight inches of the top behind the wicked point as well. It fit his hand, felt solid and durable, yet nowhere near as heavy as a humbler cutlass. Like all hunting swords or hangers, it was shorter than a smallsword—only twenty-six inches of blade—but he preferred that in the confusion of a shoulder-to-shoulder, nose-to-nose melee. And it was reassuringly heavy close to the guard, but wickedly light and quick as it tapered to the point.

  Black leather grip wrapped in gilt wire, a slim, gilt-steel swept hilt with a large oval guard to protect his fingers. There were no seashells this time, but a fairly plain pattern of stylized oak leaves. The scabbard was black leather, with gilt furnishings. They had soldered a coin-silver plaque to the outer face of the upper furnishing, with a pair of crossed cannon over a fouled anchor engraved, wreathed in oak leaf. Almost like the design of his old watch fob . . . which was now the prize of some garlic-breathed French sergeant of Lancers, too, unfortunately!

  New watch and fob, new grogram boat cloak, shaggy watch coat, dressing robes for warm or cold weather . . . it had turned into such an orgy of Spending and Getting! And guilt over his pleasures had driven him to purchase even more, for Caroline, the children, Sophie . . . even a pair of bosun’s pipes for Porter and Cony, to mark the warrants he’d gotten Porter and Bittfield, and the Admiralty’s recognition of his own prerogative to promote Will Cony to bosun’s mate.

  Then, recruiting drove him from their arms, setting up his own rendezvous, printing fliers to summon calf-headed cullys who wished to go to sea, dealing with the local regulating captain of the Impress Service. The dockyard officials, the port admiral . . . to find the rope and timber to restock Jester with spare topmasts and yards, stuns’l booms, miles of cable and rope, fresh paint, gunner’s tools . . . and the reams of correspondence necessary to beg for permission, to justify any slight alteration that might cost the Crown tuppence! Why, it was so odious, so all-encompassing an endeavor, that he’d been lucky to get a meal ashore with Caroline and . . . !

  “Anchor’s hove short, sir. Up and down!” Knolles called Lewrie from his reverie.

  “Very well, Mister Knolles. Brace for the heavy heave. Topmen aloft. Free tops’ls only. Spanker, jibs and tops’ls. Inner, outer flying, and fore topmast stays’l from the foc’s’le . . . main topmast stays’l and mizzen t’gallant stays’l. Should this perverse wind head us, I don’t wish us fighting the square-s’ls all the way aground, on the Isle of Wight. Rough on the quick-work. And the career, hmm?”

  “Aye, sir!” Knolles grinned in agreement.

  “Wait to ring up or fish the anchors to the catheads, Mister Knolles. Should we get headed, we may have to anchor again, quickly. At the southern end of Saint Helen’s Road, for certain, if a clear wind can’t be found in the Channel.”

  “Aye aye, sir. Mister Porter, Mister Cony!”

  “Won’t be elegant, but . . .” Lewrie shrugged to his sailing master, Mister Edward Buchanon, a swart and laconic-looking soul come down from the Medway to be appointed into Jester, fresh from years aboard other ships as a master’s mate, and fresh from his Trinity House examination at Tower Hill. So far, Lewrie had found him slow in speech, dull as dishwater in conversation. But that, he suspected, was the man’s innate caution, as an experienced seaman first, and as a “newly” with his first senior warrant, in a strange ship, second.

  “Aye, Cap’um.” Buchanon nodded solemnly, with only a glint of delight in his eyes to betray him. “’Tis better t’be safe’n sorry, I says. Sloop o’ war’s meant t’ dash, now an’ agin. But, ’tis many a dashin’ cap’um laid himself all-aback b’cause o’ it. You’ll be tackin’, soon’s we have steerage-way, I suggest? Larboard tack’ll take us too far t’loo’rd, toward the island.”

  “I most certainly will, Mister Buchanon, and thankee kindly for your wise suggestion,” Lewrie happily agreed.

  “Heave, and in sight!” The call came from the forecastle, as the best bower arose from the depths, trailing a storm cloud of mud and sand, and the stench of weed. Pawls clacked in the capstans, now rumbling as the hands trotted around them, bare feet drumming. Sails rustled and blocks cried as canvas sprouted on standing stays and on the tops’l yards high aloft. Jester heeled slightly to the pressure, stirring and shuffling side-wise, crabbing to the wind, with her tall rudder hard-over to windward, two quartermasters, Spenser and Brauer, maintaining their full weight on the double wheel. A gust, and she heeled a bit more, but a gust that backed more abeam this time, and Lewrie saw the quartermasters ease the helm a spoke or two, smiling.

  “Der rutter, ve haff, Kapitan,” Brauer, the pale-blond Hamburg German informed him. “ Genug, aber . . . she bites, zir.”

  “Lay her full-and-by, close to the wind as she’ll bear, till we have a goodly speed, then,” Lewrie told him, with relief in his voice. They weren’t going to be blown sidewise onto the shore to their lee! “Ready to come about to the starboard tack.”

  “Well, the lee tops’l braces, and belay!” Lewrie could hear Cony shouting from the waist to the gangway brace-tenders. Jester did not rate a yeoman of the sheets in her muster book, so a bosun’s mate was called upon to supervise several chores beyond the duties of one aboard a larger ship.

  Lookin’ fine, Will Cony, Alan told himself proudly; lookin’ fine. Cony had filled out a bit from the stripling volunteer he’d met aboard the Desperate frigate during the Revolution. Dressed now in a little style, with a white-taped short seaman’s coat with gilt buttons, a dark blue waistcoat, and tailored slop trousers; good sturdy shoes on his feet, well-blacked, with silver buckles—solid silver, not coated “pinch-beck.” A petty officer’s plain cocked hat instead of a round hat with low crown and flat, tarred brims. The former poacher lad from Gloucestershire had risen in the world. And would rise even further, if Lewrie could do anything about it, The fleet needed men like Will Cony.

  “Three knots, sir!” Mister Midshipman Spendlove shouted from the taffrails, where he and his new mate, Midshipman Hyde, had just taken a cast of the log.

  “Verdamt!” Brauer groaned, and the sails aloft rustled, losing their luff, as the commissioning pendant streamed farther aft, to the starboard quarter.

  “Headed, by God. Mister Knolles, ready about?” Lewrie called.

  “Ready, sir.”

  �
�Helm alee! Tack her, Mister Knolles. New course, due east.”

  And Jester came about. Logy at slow speed, but her bows came around sweetly, the harbor sweeping by in an effortless pirouette. Seawater began to chuckle and gurgle under her forefoot, to murmur down her sides. From aft, there was a burbling, high-throated sound of chuckling from around her rudder as she settled on her new course and found new strength in a wind now come more from the south. From France, where she’d been born.

  Across the harbor she trundled under reduced sail, Ride Sand and No-Man’s-Land astern, and Horse Sand, and the Horse Tail, off her bows, in the narrows.

  Directly the wind backed more from the east, she fell off and tacked again to larboard tack, with the wind striking her left side, with Warner Sand and St. Helen’s Patch well to their lee. Monkton Fort was the stern range-mark, up to the nor’west.

  Damme, can we do it in one long board? Lewrie exulted within. It would be a hellish comedown to chortle too soon, if he all but promised an easy departure, then was forced to come to anchor, after all. Best keep silent, for the nonce. And fret, while appearing a paragon of equanimity.

  No, they were headed again as the fickle breeze swung back to the south. Larboard tack would force them down below St. Helen’s Patch and toward Denbridge Point, into the cul-de-sac of Nab Rock, the New Grounds, and Long Rock.

  “Ready about, Mister Knolles! Quartermasters, new course east-sou’east. Mister Buchanon, I propose to go east-about the New Grounds, and stand out into the Channel to make our offing, before we come about to west, in deep water.”

  “Aye, sir, that’d be best, I think.” Buchanon nodded, after he’d pored over the chart pinned to the traverse board on the binnacle cabinet. He looked relieved, that his expertise would not be tested in those narrow channels, for below Denbridge Point there were also the risks of Betty’s Ledge, the Denbridge Ledge close inshore, and North Offing, or Princessa Rock. They were day-marked, supposedly lit at night, but it was still a chancy business.