H. M. S. Cockerel (4 page)

Nootka Sound, '91: an incredibly petty spat between Spain and England over fishing and furs halfway 'round the world on the grim and forbidding coast of America, almost to the Pole, almost to northernmost Asia! The Fleet had been called up to prepare for war, ships laid up in-ordinary had been refitted, and new construction begun. Alan had spent six weeks in active commission, first officer into a 5th Rate thirty-six-gun frigate upriver at Chatham, before saner and cooler heads prevailed and the whole business had deflated like one of those frogs', Montgolfier's, hot-air balloons.

“Another Nootka Sound, I'm certain, dearest,” he promised her.

• • •

Their bedchamber was snugly warm, and Alan Lewrie was fighting the urge to yawn, to succumb to sleep—hoping for better things to do in the shank of a cold winter evening. They'd finished supper, taken the boys into the small parlour and let them prate, babble and play as wild as they wished for an hour before shooing them off to bed. Alan and Caroline had played a duet, a medley of re-assuringly old country ballads—she on her flute, he on his cheap tin flageolet. Years of practice, and he still sounded so terrible he would not play for any guest. She'd beaten him four games out of seven at backgammon and finished the bottle of claret with him, flushed with victory, liquor and so much happily domestic contentment that she'd quite forgotten her previous worries.

The cook, governess, maidservant, his man Cony, the scullery wenches and the rest of their burgeoning household were all now belowstairs or tucked away in their garrets. Caroline was seated before a mirror at her dressing table, mobcap and dowdy woolen apparel gone, replaced by a flimsy dressing gown. Her hair was down and loose, long and shiny as she slowly and methodically brushed it.

Lewrie was under the pile of coverlets and quilts, with the steamy clothes-iron heat of the recently removed warming pan under his buttocks and back. The fireplace glowed cheery and hot across the chamber, its amber dancing flames reflected into the room by a brass backplate, throwing shadows on paneling and wallpapers.

Beneath his fine linen nightshirt he was happily encouraging a cock-stand.

He smiled in eager anticipation, admiring her reflection in the mirror as she smiled a pleased and secretive smile to herself. She posed her hair, arms lifted, exposing a graceful neck and slim arms, slim back shifting beneath her silken gown. She went back to stroking her hair, underbrushing now, with her head cocked over to one side. In her mirror, shadow breasts rustled against silk, fuller and heavier, so very much more promising than when she was girlish.

When they'd met in Wilmington, North Carolina, during the evacuation, she could not have weighed eight stone sopping wet, and that with half a dozen petticoats. Slim and coltish, still—not the usual apple-dumpling matron, after all. Perhaps a half stone more, Alan wondered? Just the slightest bit fuller in hips and upper thighs—but it was such succulent, acquiescent,
yielding
and secret excess. Sweeter, softer than ever before, as soft as gosling down.

His fingers began to twitch with a life of their own as he contemplated the butter-softness of the luscious bottom he'd soon be stroking.

“Not much needs seeing to tomorrow, I fear, dear,” she said to him, colouring a little as she saw his intent, reflected gaze.

“Muck out, feed the stock,” Alan yawned, jaws creaking in struggle against it. “Have the beef cattle driven to the stockpens. Not a morsel of pasturage left for 'em. And we don't wish to risk any spring calves, if the weather turns off colder.”

“You're beginning to anticipate a farm, after all,” she replied with a light chuckle, but it was very matter-of-fact. As if sensing that she'd been too blunt and critical of his farming skills, Caroline crinkled her large hazel eyes at him via the mirror, pursed her lips and blew him a distant kiss across the bedchamber.

“After four years it's about time, don't you think?” he said, shifting under the covers. She was smiling that particular, that secret, heavy-lidded smile—it promised to be an intimate evening indeed! “Like the Navy, knots an' ropes,” he rambled on, putting his hands beneath his head on the pillows, thoroughly at ease now. “'Cept for the bosuns who'd flog my bottom raw if I got things wrong. Thank God. ‘Can't birth a
lamb,
Mister Lewrie? 'Pon my
word,
sir! No way to bind a
sheave,
Mister Lewrie! Bosun, dozen o' y'r best, at once, sir! Bend over, kiss the gunner's daughter, Mister Lewrie!' Or is it the
farmer's
daughter, hmm?”

Caroline giggled, then went back to stroking her hair, humming a tune to herself, almost crooning. “Oh,” she paused. “We're invited to a game supper at Governour's and Millicent's. Friday night. He bagged a stag, and it should be well hung by roasting time.”

“And Uncle Phineas and his dull compatriots will be there?” Alan frowned with displeasure. “Dear as I love well-hung venison . . . Pity he didn't bag Uncle Phineas. Might be too tough an old boar to chew, though.”

“We're to bring a covered dish,” Caroline went on, resuming her stroke. “I thought a dessert would be best from us. Hmm?”

“A tart fruit jumble, that'd go well with venison,” he suggested, stifling another yawn. “Something half wild, like that red-currant preserve you put up in the fall.”

“Mmm, yes, that might do main-well.” She put aside her brush and bound her hair at last into a long, single tress. She rose from her dressing table, let the dressing gown fall open over her bed-gown and crossed to the fireplace. William Pitt, their ancient tawny ram-cat, lay stretched out on the narrow padded bench in front of the fire like a rather large orange-coloured plum duff. He was whimpering and grunting in his sleep. Caroline touched his grizzled head and he woke enough to look up, thrust the top of his head against her hand, and turn over to lie facing Lewrie, all four heavy paws together as he stretched. The one good eye regarded the bed. The stubby tail curled lazily as he recalled how cozy-warm it was to sleep with humans on cold winter nights.

Not tonight, you little bastard, Alan gloated at him.

Caroline blew out the last remaining candle and came to the high bedstead, slowly undoing the fastenings of her dressing gown, shrugging it off her shoulders to puddle at her elbows. Her hips swayed in the flickering amber darkness. He put out a hand to her.

And little Charlotte took that exact, and unfortunate, instant to wake, either wet, hungry, lonely, bored or terrified—perhaps a combination of all five—and began to bawl her little head off.

Even in the near dark Alan could see Caroline's face go empty and vacant, then vexed, then subsumed with worry, and after that she had no more thought for her husband than she might for the Man in the Moon. With frantic, matronly haste she did back up her robe and was out the door and down the hall for the nursery.

“Bloody . . . !” Alan Lewrie groaned in a soft whimper, head back on the pillows in sudden defeat, though still up on his elbows in welcome. “Bloody Hell!” he moaned, collapsing.

“Marrrh,”
William Pitt announced in a grumpy, closed-mouthed trill as he hopped up on the foot of the bed, as if he had known how the evening would fall out. He padded slowly up the covers, tacking cautiously around the slowly sinking seamount of his master's fading tumescence, and flopped himself sideways against Lewrie's upper chest, leaning his whole, and not inconsiderable, weight against him. Pitt's good eye regarded Lewrie with commiseration, his one undamaged ear gave a tiny twitch and he yawned again, as close to a grin as felines may essay, baring his remaining teeth and mismatched fangs. One heavy, round paw, big as an un-husked walnut, reached out and patted at Alan's chin, claws nicely sheathed, to give comfort. And to demand some for himself.

Lewrie slid an arm down from inside the warm, recently inviting covers to pet him and scratch the top of his head, the shaggy ruff of fur around his thick neck.

“You knew, didn't you, Pitt?” Lewrie whispered, resignedly. “I wish to God I knew how you do these things.”

“Murpphh,”
William Pitt harrumphed, beginning to purr loud and rattling, like a bilge-pump chain. He closed his eye in bliss.

At least
somebody
'round here's blissful, Lewrie thought. And most uncharitably, too.

C H A P T E R 3

B
reakfast
was a rushed affair; strong cup of tea, leftover mutton chop and burned toast. The household was a veritable babble of activity, of sound, and Lewrie needed time away from it. That and the reek of soiled nappies. Charlotte was being her usual incontinent self, Hugh had suffered a tiny “accident,” no matter he was supposedly breeched and past such. Thankfully, it was the washday, and once Lewrie returned from his morning ride across the hills, the aromas of steam, boil-water, soap and starch, and hot irons would have conquered, for a time at least, the winter-pent aromas of sour milk, soiled swaddles and progeny poop.

He had one foot in the stirrup, crouched for the leap, when a voice interrupted him. It was Cony, calling his name, standing in the kitchen door, waving something at him.

“Bloody . . .” Alan sighed, hopping on one foot to clear his boot toe from the stirrup. “
Now
what?” he demanded of the frigid morning. It had
not
been a good evening. He had struggled to stay awake until Caroline might return from the nursery, but it had taken what seemed like hours until she had quieted little Charlotte enough to allow the governess to finish the ministrations. She had slipped back into bed with him, her skin cool against his toasty warmth, and had snuggled close, kissed him a time or two with a weary, acquiescent, wifely absence of passion, gently puffing her lips with her mouth ajar against his throat in utterly stupefied slumber not half a minute later.

And had risen to her great joys of domestic duties before Cony had fetched him his first cup of tea!

“Letter f'r ya, sir,” Cony told him as he tromped through the kitchen garden. “They's a messenger come with it, down from London. In th' kitchen, warmin' 'is backside f'r now, sir.”

Lewrie turned the packet over and sucked in a cold breath of chill country air as he beheld the blue wax sealing wafer, with the fouled anchor beneath the crown. A
DMIRALTY
.

“War wi' th' French, I wager, sir,” Cony declared as Lewrie broke the seal. His man was all but hopping from one foot to the other in rising excitement. “Ever'one knowed h'it wuz a'comin'.”

“Thought the old fart'd retired by now,” Lewrie commented, as he noted the inscription below the message. A harried junior clerk had penned the bulk of it, but for the prim signature of the first secretary Philip Stephens at the bottom. He'd been first secretary to the Admiralty since the year Lewrie had been born.

20 January 1793
Admiralty, Whitehall

To Alan Lewrie, Lt., Royal Navy
Sir,
My Lords Commissioners for executing the Office of Lord
High Admiral require your most immediate attendance
upon their Lordships. You are charged and directed to . . .

“Well, damme.” Lewrie breathed again. The chill settled lower, into his stomach, not just into his lungs. “Bodkins, put Anson back in his stall. I'll not ride today. Do you fetch out the closed coach, though. It's . . .” He drew out, opened, and peered at his damascened watch. “Nigh on seven. I wish to depart for London by ten.”

“Yessir.” The groom nodded, touching his forelock.

“Be it war, sir?” Cony inquired anxiously.

“No mention of it, Cony. Yet. Something that smells nigh to it, though. I'll see that messenger now. Do you look to my chest, see what's wanting. You know my needs well as any by now. And lay out a uniform for me. I'll be up directly.”

“Aye, sir,” Cony agreed, touching his own forehead in a lank-fingered salute of old habit. “Uhm, ya wish me t' be goin' wi' ya, up t' London, that is, sir?”

“Yes, Cony. At least to London.” Lewrie smiled, though a bit grimly. “Once I'm assigned a ship . . . well, that's up to you. I allow you may be very helpful to Mrs. Lewrie about the farm. Farming's what you know best. What you enjoy most?”

“Uhm, yessir.” Cony shrugged.

“Estate agent . . . overseer . . .” Lewrie rambled on as they entered the warm kitchens, where the maids and scullery wenches walked small about the elegant but threatening stranger down from London. “No need to take you off to sea. And there's Maude down at the Ploughman, is there not?”

“Uhm, yessir,” Cony blushed, grinning a little. The publican of the Olde Ploughman was getting on in years, and his pretty little spinster daughter Maude was of marriageable age. Mr. Beakman was now a widower, had no sons interested in inheriting the public house, and both father and daughter were fond of Cony. Almost everyone in Anglesgreen was. He'd make a fine partner in the business, and a knacky publican later. Whichever way he jumped, he'd land on his feet.

And do it on dry land, if he has any sense, Lewrie thought.

“I'm Lewrie, sir,” he announced himself to the stranger. “You will wish a quick reply to carry back?”

“That would be welcome, sir,” the functionary nodded. “Though I've several more officers to call upon about Chiddingfold and Petersfield before returning, sir. The paper work, you see, sir—”

“Quite,” Lewrie grimaced at the necessity, and made the messenger grin, too, in recognition of the volumes of correspondence government seemed to generate over trifles. “Come to my study so I may scribble you something suitable. Bring your tea. I've some brandy there. A dollop'd thaw your bones, I wager?”

“Oh, aye, sir!”

As they left the kitchen for the central hall, Lewrie espied Caroline and the boys. She stood trembling, with a wild cast to her expression, with the petulant, whiny children tucked into her skirts. They couldn't know what was transpiring, surely, he thought. But it was plain enough to them that something momentous was being played out.

“Alan . . . dear,” she called after him, clearing her throat, but almost in a whisper. He thought to pause, to speak a few consoling words to her, before joining the Admiralty messenger in the study. It was her furrow and her frown that stopped him. Almost accusatory, it was, the vexed look Caroline might bestow upon an unruly boy as a warning that further such behaviour would call down chastisement.

“I'll be with you shortly, dear,” he said, instead.

“Is it war?” Alan asked after he had closed the double doors upon the rest of the household.

“Not yet, sir.” The messenger scowled, busy at the wine cabinet. “But they've been calling officers and warrants back for weeks, now. I heard tell the 'Press has been warned. Just in case.”

“Doesn't say much for me, then.” Lewrie forced a chuckle. “I was one of the first returned in '91.”

“Our Lords Commissioners never released some of those called in over Nootka Sound, sir. The Fleet stayed at least quarter-strength since, once the Terror began in Paris. Uhm, hah . . . you see, sir, you are most certainly in the
lower
half of the lieutenants' list, so if we are at quarter-strength, d'ye see—”

“Lower third, or lower, actually,” Lewrie scoffed, sitting at his desk. “February of '82.” He laid out a fresh sheet of vellum, a pot of ink (black, preferred), and took a small penknife to the nib of the nearest goose quill.

He got through the date and his local address, the address of authority, and his salutation. Then sat, quite nonplussed, wondering exactly what the Devil he would say to Our Lords Commissioners.

Milords; bugger off.
Perhaps?

The Navy had not been his career of choice; he could thank his father, far off in Bengal with the East India Company Army, for pressganging him into service, for he should have inherited the money from Granny Lewrie long before. He had never been what one might call your truly
glad
sailor. Thirteen years of his life he had given the Fleet (not without much real choice, truth to tell), nine in active service, midshipman to lieutenant—and these last four “beached” on half-pay.

He thought the French had a particularly apt word for these four years—they usually did, damn their troublesome, rebellious eyes:
Ennui.
Boredom and isolation. Shunned, and out of his depth. And as anchored as Ulysses in his dotage.

Without a war (and it was now certain one was coming, in spite of his assurances to dear Caroline), what would his life hold for him? More of Anglesgreen, still a leper to his neighbours, until such time in a misty future, when he had outlived Sir Romney and Uncle Phineas, and the grudge had faded out? Harry would inherit, become baronet, marry some unfortunate mort, and let it go at last? Lewrie
might
become a proper squire then, with owned, not rented, acres, have right to hunt and fish his own lands, instead of waiting to be asked by others' charity; some stooped and graying rustic with a fund of tedious yarns, and hair growing from out his ears, with a nose that bowed in low
congé
to his departing teeth! A well-respected, cackling bore, no matter that he bored his audience at the Red Swan at last, instead of the Ploughman.

And whilst there'd been war with the French, as tall frigates prowled like tigers in the night, bright-eyed and hungry to claw at each other, as line-of-battle ships formed to bellow, to make or break history, he would have been nothing but a spectator, and one far back in the cheap seats, too! He would
farm,
hey! Read the news down from London, in the
Naval Chronicle,
brandish his walking stick and “Huzzah!” each victory . . . or write scathing letters to the
Times.

Caroline needed him, though, would prefer this time . . .

He shuddered with revulsion at the image of his respectable civilian future—Caroline or no.

No, like his father, Sir Hugo St. George Willoughby, of the 4th, the King's Own, now of the 19th Native Infantry, had said to him once, after they were reconciled in the Far East . . .

Damme!
He realized, shivering again, recalling the details of a half-abandoned past. They had been arguing in a seething tropic rainstorm, hot as shaving water. It was at Bencoolen, on the Malacca Straits, ready to sail for the Spratlys, just my tiny ship and his regiment, to fight more pirates than the New Forest has nuts! Beat the bastards, too . . . oh, didn't we
just!
Oh, it's all moonshine, this death or glory chatter. Yet . . . !

Lt. Col. Sir Hugo had said: “Might not have been a
glad
soldier, boy . . . but I became a good'un.” Or something like that.

Growl he may, but
go
. . . aye, he believed he would. There would not be a second asking if he turned the Admiralty down. His place on the list would be scratched out, his commission thrown over.

Alan Lewrie might not have been a gladsome tar, either, but he knew in his heart that, by God, he'd become a damned good Sea Officer. And there would be no peace for his already restless soul if he didn't take the King's Shilling and serve, just one more time.

“Y'r pardons, sir,” Lewrie said, as if coming out of some trance. “'Tis been so long since I had to pen an official letter, formalities quite escaped me. You've found the brandy, I trust?”

“Rum, sir,” the messenger replied quite happily, baking before the morning fire, his large mug of laced tea in his hand. He had not taken the slightest notice that Lewrie might have been delaying, dithering or hesitant to accept the possibility of an active commission. In fact, what delay he might have at last noticed he would have liked, so he could warm himself against another cold ride and make free with Lewrie's fine, sweet dark Jamaican rum.

“Rum for me, too, it seems. ‘Clear Decks And Up Spirits,' seven bells of each forenoon,” Lewrie grunted with guilty pleasure as he put the finishing touches to his note of acceptance. He shook sand over it and blew on the ink so it would not smudge. He folded it carefully and applied candle wax to form a seal along the outer fold.

“There you are, sir. I expect to be in London by nightfall, and in the Waiting Room by tomorrow morning.”

“Then I shall keep you no longer, sir,” the messenger stated, finishing his laced tea with a gulp, and stuffed the precious note into a hard dispatch case, where fully two dozen more were already crammed, then bowed a swift departure.

Lewrie went to his wine cabinet and poured himself a glass of dark Jamaican, inventorying the study for items to take along. Would he get a ship of his own this time—something small, like
Alacrity?
Wine cabinet, fold-leg desk, caddy for tea, coffee, chocolate and sugar, extra chest yonder . . . pewter lanthorns down from the garret, just in case. Ferguson rifle there, the fusil musketoon, too, and—

No, he thought, taking a welcome, and bracing, sip. I'll go a lieutenant still, most like. Dog's manger of a cabin in the wardroom, not room for much beyond a sea chest, and little else.

He held the small glass of rum up to the firelight. It was almost opaque, and the alcohol fumes wafted the sweet, lush, adventurous scent of far-off West Indies molasses about his head, rife with promise of potency and over-the-horizon, beyond-the-sunset, larger-than-life adventure. Excitements! Honor and glory be damned.

He took another sip, savouring the rawness of the rum's bouquet. Soon it would be passer's-issue rum, cheap pop-skull, the weary seaman's anodyne. With the rum, he could almost begin to sniff a whiff of ocean. The hemp and tar, the steep tubs and the fat used for slush on running rigging, the iodine tang of open, rolling seas, the fresh-fish aromas of storm wrack and the tidewater mildewed mustiness of harbourside, of hot sand and kelp baking under a cruel sun on distant strands, and the dank-cave breath of a ship, wafting up through limber holes, and carpenters' walks from below—unwashed men, paint and wet wool, old cooking greases, of seasoned oak and sweating iron artillery.