A King's Commander

by Dewey Lambdin

  “Yer supper be ready not ten minute from now, sir,” Aspinall assured him quickly. “Yer cook come t’tell me.” Aspinall was one of those unfortunate landsmen some regulating captain and surgeon of the press had passed, when they shouldn’t have: a feeble-bodied city-bred footman, who’d lost his last employ. At least he knew enough about householdery to a gentleman for Lewrie to take him off the gangways, out of the waist, and apply his knowledge aft. Where he’d not rupture himself straining at braces and sheets. The lad was a slack, sunken-chested seventeen, ill-featured, but mannerly (mostly). At least, he had been, until he’d realized how grand his newfound stature was aboard a ship. A captain’s servant ruled the roost over the stewards to lesser men.

  “I’ll be on deck, till then,” Lewrie said, finishing his wine and setting the glass on the dampened tablecloth, which would keep most plates and such from slipping off in a moderate sea such as this evening’s.

  “I’ll send yer . . . cox’n, t’fetch ya, sir,” Aspinall suggested with lidded eyes, and a jerk of his head to Andrews, the West Indies free black who’d popped up like a jack-in-the-box a scant week before sailing to sign aboard.

  “If you would come tell me, Andrews?” Lewrie said to his man directly, bypassing the servant, who most likely resented having a Negro give him orders.

  “Aye, sah,” Andrews allowed cheerfully, too experienced a man to take notice of the jealousies of a boy; and a fresh-caught “newly” landsman, at that. It was a huge joke, to him.

  Alan emerged on the gun deck from the door to his quarters in the substantial, but temporary, wood partitions. They’d come down in battle, struck to the orlop, and his cabin would be stripped of all finery and furnishings, to avoid the danger of splinters. A Marine private, one of the watch who’d stand guard over his privacy ’round the clock, presented his musket, and Lewrie touched the brim of his cocked hat in reply.

  Up to the quarterdeck by the larboard, windward, ladder, to the further alarm of his watch-standers.

  “Carry on,” he called to them affably. “Just up for a breath of air,” he elaborated, as he paced to the windward mizzenmast stays. Lieutenant Knolles and Mister Wheelock, the master’s mate, shuffled down deck to starboard, yielding the windward side to him, which was his by right, alone, whenever he was on deck.

  There was very little left of the sunset his paperwork had kept him from relishing. Just a faint bricky trace of red and umber low on the Western horizon, with towering banks of slag-gray clouds spread to either side of Jester ’s course, and but the slightest sullen primrose glade upon the waves over which the ship’s jib boom and bowsprit rose and fell. A touch more wind on his cheek, perhaps a hatful, no more, and veering forrud by no more than half a point from abeam. Jester rose and fell more regularly, now, gently hobbyhorsing as the deeper water hinted the long-set rollers of the Atlantic to come, after the chops of the Channel closer inshore. England was an indistinct razor-thin ebony smudge to the north. France was below the horizon, lost in the companionable darkness. It was almost late enough for the lamps forrud at the forecastle belfry, by the watch, hour, and half-hour glasses and bell, and the large taffrail lanthorns, to appear cheerful and strong. A few faint stars, mostly astern above the lanthorns, were already out.

  Lewrie paced slowly aft along the larboard bulwarks, skirting the slide-carriages of the newly installed carronades. “Smashers”— eighteen-pounders—they were, short, pestle-looking cylinders of guns that threw heavy, solid iron shot, heavier than anything HMS Jester could ever mount as deck artillery. Though they didn’t shoot as far as long guns, they dealt out horrific damage when they struck. And, so far (praise Jesus) only the Royal Navy used them in any numbers. There were four on Jester ’s quarterdeck, and another pair forrud on the foc’s’le, in lieu of chase guns. Alan would have preferred two long six-pounders there, but the officials of the Ordnance Board at Gun Wharf had had only so much patience for the blandishments of a junior officer.

  Lucky to keep the guns I have, Lewrie told himself, smiling in grim reverie. A full twenty guns made Jester a small frigate, under the new rating system, a post-captain’s command; while an eighteen- gunned ship sloop was suitable to a newly promoted commander! They’d taken two away from him, with many “tsk-tsks” over his affrontery, to show up in a vessel armed beyond his rank.

  British sloops, be they brig, schooner, ketch, or three-masted ship-rigged vessels, were allotted six-pounders, and that, by God, was that. Sixth-Rate frigates got nine- or twelve-pounders, 5th Rates carried twelves, or more lately, eighteen-pounders. The French, though (most sensibly, Alan thought), armed their equivalent corvettes with les huit-livre canon— eight-pounders. And the Frog Avoirdupois Livre was just a trifle heavier than the English Pound Weight, so his eight-pounders were the equal of a British nine-pounder. The shot was almost the same diameter, perhaps a quim-hair (about one twenty-fifth of an inch) smaller, allowing a tad more obturation, or “windage,” between shot and bore diameter.

  And what was that, about a cable less at extreme elevation, at range-to-random shot, where the odds of actually hitting anything a mile-and-a-half off were pretty much By Guess and By God? Half a sea mile was considered long-range shooting, and most captains and gunners preferred point-blank, which was anything from one cable, right down to close broadsides, with the muzzles sticking almost through the enemy’s gun ports—“close pistol shot”!

  Had the officials insisted, it would have taken weeks more to outfit Jester; new six-pounders, a full eighteen of ’em, weren’t just lying about, after all. Might not even be sufficient stock far up north near Scotland, where most of the foundries had relocated, now they’d gone to coke instead of charcoal for melting and casting pig-iron. Wouldn’t cost the Crown tuppence, sirs! Bags of Frog round-shot aboard, sixty per gun now, and replacement nine-pounder English shot is a lot cheaper than an entire new set of artillery! Please, sirs! Pretty please, sirs? Can’t swing idle for a month, sirs!

  And, when they’d come, what would he have ended up with? Some of those new, lighter, and shorter Blomefield Pattern pieces, which he had heard had a distressing tendency to burst when charged with newfangled cylinder powder ’stead of puny old corned powder! No, there was only one thing he admired about Blomefields—that neat forged-on loop for the breeching ropes above the cascabel button. His old guns had breeching ropes eye-spliced about the button, while Blomefields let the ropes pass through ring bolts on the truck carriages, then through that loop, easing stress on the breeching if fired at extreme angles. They wouldn’t snap their breeching and roll about like rampaging steers if pointed too far forrud or aft in the gun ports, or rip the end ring bolts in the bulwarks loose.

  No he’d have his nine-pounders, and God help the Frog who came within range, mistaking Jester for a quarterdecked ship sloop below the Rates, armed with mere popguns!

  He spoke briefly with his surgeon, Mister Howse, that tall and lanky saturnine of the square, mournful face, who always looked as if he needed a shave, even right after shaving; and his surgeon’s mate, LeGoff, who played the gingery terrier to Howse’s rangy mastiff. No one had herniated yet; there were some sore muscles, but Howse held that horse liniment usually worked just as well on bipeds as it did for quadrupeds.

  Midshipman Hyde with Knolles near the double-wheel. Knolles was midtwenties, blond-haired, and sun-bronzed. If some spark of relationship had arisen between him and his charge Sophie—and Alan had pressed ’em damn’ hard together—there was no sign of it. Hyde . . . a year older than Mister Midshipman Clarence Spendlove, at sixteen, a seasoned lad, well-salted and daubed with his “ha’porth of tar” since he was nine. Hmm . . . good family, he’d learned, was Hyde. Talented, cheerful, able. A bit on his guard, being so new aboard, but the port admiral had recommended him highly, had lifted him out of a 3rd-Rate seventy-four for more seasoning aboard Jester where he’d be one of two, instead of one among twenty-four middies. To do the port admiral a favor usually meant one in return; you scratch my protégé, I’
ll scratch yours.

  “Yer pahdons, Cap’um,” Andrews said at last, coming onto the quarterdeck. “But dot Aspinall say yer suppah jus’ now come from de galley, pipin’ hot, sah.”

  “Thankee, Andrews!” Lewrie brightened, as famished as a middie on short commons by then. “Toulon slunk out of hiding yet?”

  “Well, sah, ah ’spect he’s ovah ’is sulk,” Andrews chuckled in a deep, soft voice, “An’ when he caught a whiff o’ po’k cracklin’s, he come on out, sah. ’Twoz all me an’ dot boy Aspinall could do, keepin’ him off de table. Do ah go forrud an’ tell ya cook ya be wantin’ cawfee later, Cap’um, fo’ dey douse de galley fires fo’ de night?”

  “No, no coffee tonight,” Lewrie decided. There was a very good chance this wind would veer ahead during the Middle Watch, rousing him from bed. After all the excitement and tension, a good meal would put him under quickly, and he needed some sleep, beforehand. “You tell him to forget it this evening, and turn in, the pair of you.”

  “Aye, sah. Thankee, Cap’um,” Andrews replied.

  “Enjoy the singsong, below-decks.” Lewrie grimaced.

  On the berth deck, where “pusser’s glims” still burned on mess tables, the sounds of fiddle, fife, and tuning box could be heard, well into a droning, lugubriously sentimental, dirgelike song. Hands were singing along, some already in their hammocks hung from carline posts and overhead beams; linens, bolsters, and thin mattresses already full of softly swinging seamen, in the minutes before Lights Out.

  “Ooh, Law’, not dot’un, sah.” Andrews shook his head in scorn. “Sailors, dey know de words t’hundred o’ songs . . . but only know de one tune. Dot’un. Same’z it woz ’board ev’ry ship I been on, sah.”

  He and Andrews went back a long way, to the Shrike brig, and he had become Lewrie’s coxswain briefly, before she’d paid off after the war ended. Now he was cox’n, again, in charge of Alan’s gig and crew. Andrews had always been reticent about his past. In the West Indies, Lewrie’d been certain that Andrews in his youth had been a house slave, and a runaway. There were no lash scars on his back, he vaguely remembered, but . . . Andrews could read and write, even then, had skills enough to make ordinary seaman, and had been rated able before they’d paid off. Alan wasn’t even sure that Andrews was his real name, but that was the one he was known by at the Admiralty, never a place to be picky about a volunteer seaman’s antecedents.

  His recent history had been merchant service, a summer in the Portugee fisheries off the Grand Banks, then a spell ashore as house servant and valet to a retired Liverpool merchant captain; but that fellow had passed over recently, and he’d lost his comfortable shore position. Now he was both cox’n and great-cabin factotum.

  A “bright,” Caroline had called him, after she’d met him, one of what she termed “the yard-Cuffies”; the by-blow of a white master or overseer on a mulatto or quadroon housemaid. Part white and part black, and pent like a storm petrel over both worlds, belonging to neither. Her North Carolina, slave-owning family experience warned her, and Alan, against him, but he was an old shipmate. And a Navy man a lot longer than he’d been a fugitive, furtive slave.

  “That tune?” Lewrie asked. He was not all that musical.

  “‘Adm’l Hosier’s Ghost,’ sah!” Andrews snickered. “I t’ink ah teaches de tune t’ ‘Ovah de Hill An’ Far Away,’ fo’ we heah any mo’ ’bout dot dead mon’s spook!”

  Toulon was over his sulks, nothing hurt but his fierce feline pride. As soon as he was seated at table, the cat was up his nose, wheedling and begging, tail erect and quivering in gustatory anticipation.

  So recent the break from shore, there was still fresh meat on the hoof or paw, or on the roost, aboard, in the manger forrud. Hens, ducks, geese, for fresh eggs, and a rare treat after Sunday divisions. For captain and officers, alone, of course. Goat and kid for milk—or meat, if they did not prosper at sea. A sow and piglets, a brace of ewes and four lambs. There had been a yearling bullock, but he’d gone into the steep tubs in four-pound cuts per eight-man mess, that afternoon, with tripes and tongue and blood pudding, to boot. There were smoked or salted joints hanging in gunroom pantries, captains’ stores, everywhere one could find a place to hang a hook. To stave off the day when everyone had to subsist on salt beef or salt pork.

  Alan dined on a fine pork broth, mixed with desiccated “portable” pea soup; fresh loaf bread instead of hard and dry, soon to be weevily and sour, ship’s biscuit. A pair of small roast potatoes, piquant with some of Caroline’s herb vinegar. And a hefty pile of sliced roast pork, some with the cracklings on; the most succulent cuts from a piglet shared with the wardroom mess.

  And, it was fine to dine alone, too, for once, after so many civilian, and perilous, suppers with wife, ward, and children underfoot, sure to tip something over at any moment. Calming, it was, too, to—for a few hours, at least—have some privacy from the never-ceasing demands to be social with his officers. In a few days or weeks, he’d begin a round-robin of dining them in, a few at once, to be sociable. Once the rigidly demanded isolation of command got too great.

  There was a rather fine, smooth and dry Bordeaux, which Aspinall had let breathe for an hour (and how the Portsmouth wine merchant got his hands on such a wondrous French wine, he’d ask no questions!).

  Fresh greens in a small salad to cleanse his palate for fresh Cheddar, extra-fine sweet biscuits, and a smooth and heady Oporto. Gingersnaps, the biscuits were, another of Caroline’s touches, all lovingly packed. Along with calf’s-foot jelly; though Alan had no clue as to why—he despised the stuff.

  Toulon got his share, on the deck by Lewrie’s chair. Cracklin’s, pork, a sliver of cheese which he adored. A quarter of a gingersnap with a thin smear of fresh butter; good for his coat and teeth. For as long as butter remained wholesome, that is.

  • • •

  A loll on the transom settee, with all lanthorns in the day-cabin extinguished. A sated Toulon stretched across his lap, being brushed softly, tail slowly curling in bliss. After nine p.m. now, on a sleeping ship, on an empty and dark ocean. All glims out, and the ship’s corporal, an officious able seaman named Wilhoit, making his rounds with the midshipman of the watch, to see that all was in order and quiet, that no flame burned below-decks from lanthorn or candle.

  Lewrie’s gritty eyes fluttered, as he yawned aloud. So much tension, the last few weeks, so much last-minute folderol, the last few days and hours before sailing. Regaining his freedom.

  And once back in the Mediterranean . . . once back with Hood, who had surely taken Corsica by siege, by now. First step, though, would be at Gibraltar, with dispatches for General O’Hara, the ancient “Cock of the Rock.”

  Where Phoebe Aretino was awaiting his return.

  “Christ.” Lewrie sighed to the companionable dark.

  Best to end that, fast, he thought sadly. Face to face, that’d be best, I s’pose. Letter’s so bloody cowardly an’ cold. Well, I had my joy of her. Give her, what . . . a hundred pounds or so, to tide her over till she finds herself a new patron? Sounds about right. And . . . here on out, I’ve far too much on my plate, to spare time on diversion.

  Even a petite and pretty diversion. He shrugged.

  “Bedtime, Toulon,” he announced in a yawny whisper.

  He undressed in the dark of the sleeping coach, just abaft the chart space on the starboard side, a canvas and folding partition chamber. He pulled off his own boots, dropped his breeches, and tossed them over the top of a sea chest for Aspinall to stow away in the morning. His “man” had laid out a clean pair of slop trousers, which Alan preferred for undress wear at sea. Cheap, durable, and easy to part with once they’d mildewed, tanned, gotten stained with tar and slush . . . or simply wore out.

  Fresh, virginal bed coverlet, painted and embroidered by Caroline’s talented hands; fresh linen sheets, and pillow slips over puffy, never-used bolsters filled with home-farm goose down. The mattress in the bed box was from Anglesgreen, too; goose down packed top and botto
m over a lamb’s-wool batt center, sewed into a striped ticken cover.

  The narrow hanging bed cot was slung at about waist level over the black-and-white painted checker of the canvas deck covering; slung fore-and-aft instead of the more-usual athwart-ship. An elegant form of hammock, really, braced by a rectangle of oak, with double layers of heavy storm canvas inside. Six feet long, it was, and a few inches more than three feet wide.

  A bachelor’s box, Alan snickered to himself as he rolled into it and set it swinging, as Toulon sat on the deck crying “Maiwee?” in a plaintive voice, as if he had to ask permission each and every evening, judging the best moment for his leap.

  The little pest required a full ten minutes to satisfy, shoving his head under Lewrie’s more-than-willing hands to be rubbed, purring and vibrating, nose-patting with soft paws, ear-snuffling as he kneaded the bolsters. He finally took his ease ’twixt torso and arm to the larboard side, paws braced against the canvas, with his back hard up against Alan’s chest.

  Damme no, not a bachelor’s box. Lewrie grinned in the darkness, yawning so hard he thought he’d dislocate his jaw this time. ’Tis a husband’s box. Narrow, and straight-laid.

  His husband’s box swayed to the easy roll and slow pitch of the ship as she snored her way across the deeps, loping for the open seas. And rocking her captain, his cat, and all the sleeping off-watch tars who put their trust in her, to a pacific rest.

  C H A P T E R 3

  The winds did indeed come more and more westerly, as Jester came abeam of Plymouth on her slog down-Channel, veering bow-wards toward a close reach, then close-hauled, her second day of passage, forcing her to alter course nor’west, for she could not maintain a luff nearer than six points to the wind.

  The old problem of leaving England; being driven shoreward by a brisk westerly, right up toward the Lizard or Torbay, or having to tack and beat sou’west toward the hostile coast of France, which was a rock-strewn horror in peacetime, and aswarm with warships now, from the French bases at Brest and St. Malo.