The King l-4

by Dewey Lambdin

  "Bastard!" Burgess hissed.

  "I'm on watch, so I'll leave you to it for now," Alan sighed. "Steward?"

  He went aft to stand by the sheltered double wheel, where four quartermasters threw their weight on the helm as Telesto butted her way through the off-shore Channel chop. There was now and then some hint of the Atlantic to come, a long roller cross-set to the chop. The wind, once out of shelter of the coast, was a live thing that tried to throw the ship's head down southerly for the coast of France, requiring those four men's strength to hold her course. Captain Ayscough took a last look around, nodded to the second officer, Mr. Percival, and took himself aft under the poop into the passageway to his great cabins right in the stem. Percival strolled up the canted deck from amidships to the windward rail, taking a look at the compass card and grunting his satisfaction in passing.

  Alan didn't think he was going to like Percival. The man was one of those massive beasts, all chest and arms, with a neck like a breeding bull, and a heavy jaw. Percival had the brow ridge of a mountain gorilla, and looked to be the sort who could break oak beams with his bare hands.

  He was certainly the sort of fellow who had grown up being the biggest and toughest of his playmates, the one who enjoyed being the top-dog in the pack, and would fight anyone to keep his status. In the last week, they had sparred, verbally so far. Even asking for the jam pot was a challenge to Percival's dominance.

  "All prick and no personality," Alan muttered to himself, and one of the quartermasters grinned at the comment as he shifted a quid of tobacco from one cheek to the other. "West sou'west, half west, as she goes."

  "Aye, sir."

  Other than Percival, the wardroom was a fairly decent gathering. There was Choate, bluff and steady, glad to have active employment now the war was over. He had a wife and family in Harwich, and was more in need of full pay than most. The third officer, Colin McTaggart, was one of Ayscough's prot6-ges, a slim and wiry young fellow of twenty-five or so. He had black hair as curly as a goat, dark eyes and a pug nose. Being a Scot, he was better educated than most young men who joined the Navy, and was enjoyable to converse with. So far.

  To make room for their super-cargo (Twigg and his mostly unseen partner Tom Wythy) the sailing master, one Mr. Brainard, had been shifted below a deck to the officers' wardroom. He was another of those mysteries, like Ajit Roy- brought in on account of his familiarity with Asian waters. He _ was also, like Twigg and Wythy, civilian in origin, never having served in the Royal Navy. Brainard had a civilian's usual disdain for the Navy and its way of doing things. A sneer here, a lifted eyebrow there and a heavy sigh or two of exasperation met any evolution that differed from merchantman practice.

  Brainard was as roly-poly as a Toby jug, but held no cheer, and sheltered his past, and any conversation, behind an aloof air of duty. He was as weathered and dried as a piece of hawse-buckler leather, baked to a permanent brick color. So far, he had not been seen to imbibe anything but water or small beer, or crack the slightest smile in the mess. Indeed, it would have been hard to determine if he had any facial expressions at all, since he swathed himself in the heaviest grogram watchcoat even below decks where a small coal-fired stove attempted to warm the wardroom. It seemed a chore to remove his mittens so he could partake of his meals. And the one time Alan had peeked through the opened door of his cabin as one of the ship's boys cleaned it, the bunk had been mounded with no less than four blankets.

  One thing Alan had learned in his Naval service, though, was that even the worst messmates could be abided. He hadn't expected the voyage would be all "claret and cruising." People gave others personal space, as much as was able, and ignored the worst offenders, limiting their exchanges to professional work.

  Far enough off the coast now that England was an indistinct smear of headlands almost lost in low scudding clouds, the ship was going like a hobbyhorse in a playroom. Alan clung to the weather shrouds on the starboard side of the wide deck and began to wonder why he had thought Telesto a big ship. The open Atlantic rolled and heaved up in dully guttering hills before them, shrinking the massive ship to a toy that groaned and creaked as she rolled and pitched with a slow, ponderous gait. Soaring up as the scend of the sea deigned to raise her, cocking downward as the waves receded behind her. One moment Telesto was elevated high enough to expose miles and miles of ocean to Alan's view, the next sunk down into a trough, sliding forward as though she would butt into the next wave and shatter, but always riding up and away from danger. And at those times, he could see no farmer than the creaming tops of the wave-crests that hillocked like frothy ink on either beam as high as the weather deck.

  "Going like a race horse," he muttered aloud, feeling Telesto as she trembled up from keel to oaken decks below his shoes. She was, indeed, riding the sea and careering forward at a wonderfully prodigious pace.

  "Mister Hogue?" he called for one of the master's mates in his watch who was secretly a senior midshipman enlisted in their adventure.

  "Aye, sir?"

  "Cast of the log, if you please. I doubt very much if we'll get a decent sight for our position today. And I'd not like to set her on Ushant before the voyage is even begun."

  "Aye aye, sir."

  Hogue came back several minutes later, his watchcoat and hat speckled with drops of seawater, and his mittens soaked. "Nine and a quarter knots, sir," Hogue said proudly. "She's a fast 'un, no mistake about her, sir."

  "Indeed she is," Alan said, grinning. He climbed up onto the mizzen shrouds for a better view with his telescope. "I make that to be the high point just west of Looe, just aft of abeam now. Where would that put us, were you navigating, Mister Hogue?"

  "Allow me to fetch my sextant, sir."

  Every time the ship rose up on a surging billow of ocean, they took a land sight, comparing compass bearings, trying to compute on a slate how far offshore they were, if the high ground west of Looe was known to be 387 feet high, and only subtended a degree or so above the indistinct horizon.

  'Then on this course, allowing for Telesto making a certain amount of leeway to the suther'd, we'll fetch Lizard Point with at least ten miles of sea-room," Alan stated finally.

  "If the wind stays fair, sir," Hogue commented, more sage than his scant eighteen years might allow. "Bound to come more westerly as we leave the Channel."

  "A hard beat, then, but with the tidal flow, not against it, until at least midnight."

  "Else we'll have to tack and fight the tides, losing everything we've gained, sir," Hogue warned. "Inshore in the dark."

  "Thankee, Mister Hogue," Alan said, rolling up the chart Mr. Brainard had left on the binnacle table.

  And if that happens, Alan thought lazily, it'll not happen on my watch, thank the good Lord. He strolled back up to the windward side and took out his pocket watch to take a peek at the time. Three hours to go until his watch would be dismissed below.

  He threaded an arm through the shrouds once again and shivered in his thick clothing. The wind was wet and a little raw, a live thing out at sea, a continual noise that a landsman would never notice above the murmurs of the ship.

  If the winds did come more westerly, they could harden up to close-hauled and beat within six points of its origin, he decided: just enough to keep Telesto in mid-Channel, well clear of the Lizard, and a safe twenty leagues or so from the rocky coast of France. He debated with himself if it would be worth it to tack north'rd if it really came foul-embay themselves south of Falmouth, then tack once more due south to clear the Lizard?

  He turned his face to the raw wind and felt its strength on either cheek, sniffing for the source of all that awesome power that moyed their ship. Still well north of west, and not so strong they'd have to take another reef aloft just yet.

  A gaggle of passengers came boiling up from below, reeling in another bout of illness, and Alan smiled as they staggered down to the leeward side to spew. So far, his own stomach was showing its cast-iron consistency. And, he realized with a start, his sea legs were
returning, those sea legs that in the beginning he had never even had the slightest desire to achieve. "Not so bad once you're in," he mused aloud. "Like Young Jack told his first whore."

  Depriving and dull a voyage might be, but it was something he had become somewhat good at. His ability to shrug off the natural reaction to the ship's motion and spew his guts out, or reel like a sot as she pitched and rolled beneath him, was pleasing to his pride. As was his ability to decypher their rough position with the briefest of clues from the coast. And didn't Telesto ride well, he thought. She was a true thoroughbred, properly laden and ballasted, with as much canvas aloft as she could bear for the moment-slicing through those hum-mocking seas with a sure-footed nearness of motion that gave him a thrill of… dare he call it pleasure… with every swoop and rise?

  "Damme, this feels good!" he declared to the winds and seas.

  His first watch ended at four in the afternoon, and he headed below, face and hands raw with the wind and chill, eager for warmth, for a seat near the glowing stove and a glass of something cheerful. But he was delayed from those simple pleasures by the sight of Tom Wythy, their other "owner."

  "A word with ye, Mister Lewrie?" the man beckoned. Since Wythy had been pretty much an unseen presence so far, it was more curiosity that led Alan aft to the doorway to the passage that led under the poop to the super-cargo cabins.

  "Aye, sir?" Alan replied, and followed the rotund man into his cabin across the passageway from Twigg's. He hoped he'd get some liquid refreshment, at the least.

  "Tot o' rum?" Wythy offered once the door was shut. Wythy took up most of the cabin-he was rounder and heavier than even Mr. Brainard the sailing master, his face hidden behind a thick greying beard, and that in an age when most fashionable men shaved closely. There was a red-veined doorknob of a nose, ruddy cheeks round as spring apples and bright, glittering eyes lost in the pudding face the beard most likely concealed.

  "I've made some inquiries about yer little excitement," Wythy told him, rubbing the side of that bulbous proboscis with the side of a thumb as thick as a belaying pin. "Took this long t' get even a fast rider t' London an' back. An' I asked about ashore. That's what's kept me busy an' out o' sight so far, so this is our first opportunity to make our acquaintances. Hope ye'll forgive me that."

  "Of course, sir," Alan told him. "And what have you found?"

  "Oh, we've stirred up an ant-hill, no error." Wythy grinned, baring a rather sparse, but strong set of teeth-those remaining in his head, at least. "Even caught us a French spy or two."

  "So it was the French, sir." Alan enthused at the proof of a devilish conspiracy, the rum racing in his veins and warming his chill belly.

  "Nothin' t' do with ye, sir," Wythy informed him, turning the broad smile off. "We winkled a brace o' informers out o' the woodpile, but that was more serendipity. Ye've been a bad boy, Mister Lewrie, 'deed ye have. A very bad boy."

  "Was it anyone I told, sir?" Alan cringed, waiting for the thunderstorm of rage he imagined would follow.

  "I was thinkin' more o' yer taste for married flesh, Mister Lewrie, not yer indiscretion," Wythy said, glaring at him. "Imagine it for a moment. Us expectin' the worst. Word o' our venture leakin' to our foes 'cross the Channel. No end o' shite-storm as our people trace back every man in the know, ye included, t' see if someone's blabbed in his cups'r whispered in the wrong wench's ear."

  "But I knew nothing to 'blab' before stepping on board, sir," Alan replied, springing to his own defense out of long-established habit. He'd gotten rather good at it-had to have gotten good at it-since he'd been breeched. "Sir Onsley only said Burgess Chiswick would be going to the Far East on some vital mission but I had no idea I had any part of it until the old fool… until I received my letter from the Admiralty. And I didn't connect my appointment into this ship with him until Chiswick came aboard, either, sir."

  "Ah, but yer patron, Sir Onsley could," Wythy hissed evilly. "What's more natural among gentlemen in their clubs'n t' answer an inquiry 'bout where ye are, lad? Under the rose, as it were. Well, let me say, yer former patron. Sir Onsley's stock 'round Whitehall 's not so high anymore. Find another, 's my advice t' ye."

  "But…"

  "Had ye not been swivin' with another man's wife, he'd not have set henchmen on ye to kill ye," Wythy drummed out, beating Lewrie on the head and shoulders with harsh words. "We'd not have turned all the south of England arsey-varsey lookin' fer spies, not have spent over a thousand pounds o' Crown money to do it, either. Had ye the slightest bit o' sense, ye'd never been caught tuppin' her in the first place!"

  "Lord Cantner?" Alan burst out in a near-screech of surprise.

  "Aye," Wythy snarled. "Funny what a man'll stand for, long's he don't have t' be confronted direct. Funny the things a man'll stoop to once he is. Two brace o' murderers, one pair t' Wheddon Cross if ye'd gone there. T'other pair ye and yer man did for, all scum from a rookery who smuggled brandy an' lace for your Lord Cantner from the Continent. Seamen, might o' been in league with Frogs who supplied 'em. First pair come t' Plymouth an' nosed about, asking a lot o' questions. Even tried t' sign aboard this ship. Hah, ye didn't know that, did ye, now? Lucky we were a full complement when they did. Couple o' people in the pay o' the French got wind o' it. Began t' wonder what so many Navy hands were doin' signin' aboard Telesto. Never had a clue, 'less ye hadn't stirred up the waters, Mister Lewrie. Well, we stopped their bloody business. Stopped the business o' those hired killers, too. Dead bodies floatin' in a seaport town'r nothin' much t' get exercised about."

  "Jesus." Alan gulped at the calmness with which Wythy spoke of having four human beings dispatched. He took a pull on his tot of rum.

  "One o' our people had a little chat with yer Lord Cantner as well," Wythy went on. "Pity ye ain't back in London t' console the poor widow. She's become a dev'lish wealthy widow, of a sudden."

  "You… you had him killed?" Alan shuddered.

  "Expired on his own, damn his blood!" Wythy spat, as though he would have relished throttling the old colt's-tooth. "Right in the middle o' bein' told we had him dead t' rights for attempted murder. An' how vexed the Crown'd be with him. Apoplexy, they say."

  "God's teeth!" Lewrie chilled, raising his tot to drain it dry. Well, at least that was behind him. He'd not have to fear any more attempts on his life from Lord Cantner, anyway, though he wasn't sure as to Wythy's or Twigg's intentions. "Hold on, now, sir. You said that you made inquiries. Did you ask of the Chiswick family? Did you pester them? Did you harm them in any way? By God, if…"

  "Discreet inquiries, nothin' more," Wythy assured him. "I'm told the lass's prettier'n springtime. Soft on her, are ye? Well, she an' her family weren't run through the Star Chamber. And, ye'll be happy t' know that little servin' wench isn't truly 'an-kled.' My word, but ye're a busy boy, ain't ye, now, Mister Lewrie? But d'ye see just how much trouble that wayward prick o' yer'n has caused us?"

  "Aye, sir," Alan replied, as abashed as a first-term student.

  "And ye'll not breathe a bloody word more'n 'pass the port' t' anyone, long's yer aboard this ship. Long as this venture lasts, eh?"

  "Indeed not, sir," Alan said, meek as a pup.

  "And ye'll not go dippin' yer wick 'less I or Zachariah Twigg give ye leave, now, will ye, Mister Lewrie." It was not a question.

  "I should think," Lewrie had to grin, getting his spirit back, "that that would not be a problem for the next six months, Mister Wythy."

  " T'isn't funny, boy. Ye have need o' swivin' once we're in Calcutta, with our leave, mind ye, ye'll cleave yer tongue t' the roof o' yer mouth," Wythy whispered. " 'Cause if ye can't, if we ever suspect ye of any indiscretion that'd jeopardize this expedition, 'r risk men's lives, then God have mercy on yer miserable soul! Do we understand each other… Mister Lewrie?"

  "Aye, sir!" Alan answered quickly, suddenly realizing just how dangerous this mission was. "Indeed we do, sir! I give you my solemn oath we do."

  Christ, would these ghouls kill me? Yes, I think they
just might! Goddamn me, what sort of a pack of monsters have I been caged up with? These… these blackamoors work for the Crown?

  "Good. Ye may go, then. By the way…"

  "Yes, Mister Wythy?" Lewrie said, damned eager to get out of the door, but held mesmerized like a bird by a snake.

  "Seems that Lord Cantner might o' died happy in one respect," Wythy allowed. "The latest jape runnin' round his circle back in London 's how he finally fathered an heir, and the effort killed him."

  "Lady Delia?"

  "Bakin' some young buck's bastard, aye," Wythy noted, grinning briefly.

  "Seems to be a lot of that going 'round, sir." Alan grimaced. "May I go, sir? Is that all you wish of me for now?"

  "Aye, Mister Lewrie, that'll be all," Wythy said, retrieving the glass from Alan's nerveless hand. "And I do mean all!"

  II

  "The nature of things is in the habit of concealing itself."

  – HERACLITUS

  Chapter 1

  Falconer's Marine Dictionary, by now well-thumbed and stained with tar, proved prophetic on the subject of winds when Alan referred to it. Running down past Portugal, one hundred leagues offshore, they had reveled in the expected nor'east gales, from 28 degrees to 10 degrees north. Then, with winter waning, they met the southerlies south of 10 degrees north, against which they beat hard to make forward progress. And below that latitude, when the winds did indeed come more easterly, they brought gloom and heavy seas in the region known as The Rains, where Telesto was sometimes becaJmed, sometimes boxing the compass in slight, vexing airs to the fourth degree of north. Then had come stronger easterlies, ferocious gales accompanied by chicken-strangling rainstorms and lightning displays worthy of the first portals of Hell to blow them south.