H. M. S. Cockerel (6 page)

“Main-well, sir,” Lieutenant Hogue blushed. “And you to thank for my promotion, I learned.” His former midshipman was aglow with fondness.

Damn right you should thank me, Lewrie thought smugly.

“Did it yourself, sir,” he pooh-poohed, though. “Your service did it. When they gave us
Culverin,
and we fought the Lanun Rovers in the Far East.” Lewrie took care to say that loud enough for others. The Waiting Room was no place to show lickspittle meek before one's peers. Now there was almost war with France, their covert work could be revealed. “Put paid to Choundas and his pirates. Where are you bound? Do you know yet?”

“Third Rate 74, sir,” Hogue boasted. “Only fourth officer, but . . . I'm off to Chatham on the next diligence coach. And you, sir?”

“Just arrived, so I've no idea yet. Time for tea, though, my lad?” Lewrie offered. “Warm your ride in the ‘rumble-tumble,' hey?”

But Lieutenant Hogue had no time. And, an hour later, there was one more old acquaintance; Railsford of the old
Desperate,
a captain now.

“Damn my eyes if it isn't Lewrie, ha ha!” Captain Railsford cried, pumping his hand vigorously. “Heard about your last commission. The very merriest time you must've had in the Bahamas . . . all those pirates? Me?
Hydra,
down to the Nore. Finest frigate ever I laid my eyes upon. Damme, wish I'd known you were available, I'd have requested you. But, I already have a first lieutenant. And you
are
getting senior-ish.”

“Oh, well. I understand completely, sir,” Lewrie grinned back, though he was crestfallen. Another three years under Railsford, fine seaman, well-disposed friend and mentor, would have been a joy.

“And Captain Treghues, sir?” Alan asked, merely from curiosity.

“Inherited the title last year, I believe. Married well, too, into the Walpoles. Cadet branch, but . . . !” Railsford enthused. The Walpoles were one of the Great Families, who pretty much ran England through influence and married-in minions. “Got a seat in Parliament out of it, too. Capt. Lord Tobias Treghues, Baron. Sure to make rear admiral soon, with those connections.”

“Is he still . . . ?” Lewrie simpered, screwing a knuckle to the side of his forehead.

“Occasionally daft as bats? Hmm, let's say, now he's risen so . . . a
tad
eccentric.” Railsford chuckled softly. “And that only on odd
humid
days. Well, my fondest wishes for your continued good fortune, Lewrie . . . but I must dash. Write to me.”

An hour, another slow circumnavigation of the Waiting Room (and two cups of tea) later, still with no seat, he ran into another “old shipmate,” of a sort.

“Sir George,” Lewrie said hesitantly, anxious though he was to see a familiar, if hated, face. Sir George Sinclair was now a rear admiral. He turned a hostile, aquiline glare on the interloper who'd
dare
trifle with his valuable, and selective, attention.

“Alan Lewrie, Sir George.
Desperate?
Antigua . . . '80 . . . '81?”

“Ay, yes.” Sir George replied frostily, his eyes glazing over with sublime disinterest. “I remember you.” It sounded more like a threat. “Still
at
it, are we, Lewrie?”

Alan imagined he could hear talons being stretched, hard chitin claws being honed. “Uhm, aye, sir.”

“And you recall my nephew, Forrester, do you not?”

Oh, damme! Lewrie sighed, defeated and eager to run. The round post-captain hovering over Sir George's shoulder was that selfsame porcine glutton, that bane of his midshipman days, Francis Forrester. He hadn't gotten any trimmer. But he
was
a post-captain, despite his being dense as a kerbstone. It helped Lewrie's flagging confidence to recall that his fellow midshipmen had once painted Forrester blue as a Druid, and pissed in his shoes at every opportunity. Forrester's expression, however, told Alan that
his
memory of his days in the cockpit berths was just as keen . . . if not quite so fond.

“
Much
senior, are you, Lewrie?” Forrester grunted.

“Bottom half, I would imagine, sir.” That “sir” was wrung from him with the greatest chagrin. Last he'd seen of Francis, he'd been a paroled prisoner after Yorktown, exchanged on the
Bonetta
sloop to New York, his career in pieces. God, how he'd risen, though!

“Eminently employable, then,” Forrester beamed with sudden joy. “Do you not think, Uncle?”

“We
shall
keep you in mind, sir.” Sir George vowed.

Jesus, kill me now, and have done, Lewrie prayed! Anything but their clutches! Anything!

“There's Bligh!” someone breathed behind Lewrie's left shoulder, quickly followed by a stifled giggle of mirth. “Poor old fellow,” someone else more charitable commented.

He was a little fellow, nothing like the tragic hero he'd been proclaimed when he'd first reached England after the Mutiny. Nothing like the ogre he'd lately been portrayed, either. Despite his recent, and calamitous, downfall in popular opinion, he still drew his throng of admirers. Lewrie joined them. It was a
slow
morning.

“Read your book, sir,” Lewrie toadied, all but simpering. “God, I wish I'd but known you might be here this very day, sir . . . I'd have fetched it along so you might have inscribed it.”

“Kind of you to say so, sir. Quite,” Captain Bligh replied, a trifle dubiously, a trifle shyly, half-expecting he was being made the butt of a jape.

“Bad timing, I gathered, sir,” Lewrie went on. “Having to wait so long at Otaheiti for the breadfruit plants' growing season. Well, what crew
wouldn't
go stale on one, I ask you.”

“Delivered properly this time, sir,” Bligh declared, firmer in his convictions, now that he saw he still had some admirers. “In
Providence,
a proper ship, an Indiaman.”

“Pity, though,” Lewrie shrugged, “Captain Edwards and
Pandora.
Had their Lordships ordered things the other way 'round . . . you to go pursue your mutineers, Edwards to fetch the breadfruit . . .”

Capt. Edward Edwards, a taut hand if ever there was one, who made Bligh's easygoing (though unpredictable) ways seem like a saint in comparison, had apprehended several mutineers left behind when the
Bounty
sailed off for parts unknown. But Edwards had piled
Pandora
on the coral reefs of Endeavour Straits, and had lost her.

“I predicted dire consequences, ya know,” Bligh almost preened by then, feeling more comfortable among sycophantic curiosity seekers. “
Told
'em Edwards did not know the navigation of Flinders Passage in the reefs, of Endeavour Straits. Excuse me, sir . . . but you are . . . ?”

“Lewrie, sir. Alan Lewrie.”

“Ah, yes. Well, thankee for your kind opinion, sir. Thankee kindly,” Bligh bobbed with a shy smile.

“I suppose you must be going, sir, I will delay you no longer. Off to a new command, I trust?” Lewrie fawned.

“Good day, sir,” Bligh snapped suddenly, turned on his heel, and departed in a frosty, insulted huff.

“Bloody hell!” Alan muttered to himself in confusion.

“I shouldn't worry over it much,” an unfamiliar lieutenant told him in a whisper. “The court martial only hanged three out of ten and let the rest off, lenient as possible, didn't they, now. Read Edward Christian's
Minutes of the Court Martial,
and the scales will balance. Fletcher Christian's brother, don't ye know?” the man sniggered. “The First Lord, Lord Chatham . . . I'm told he's issued word he'd only award Bligh with a ship should Hell freeze over. Won't even give him the time of
day,
is the rumor! No berth to be had with him. Thank the Good Lord.”

“So I've . . .” Lewrie sighed with a wry grin at his toadying.

“Right. Pissed down his back for nought,” the other chortled.

“An occupational hazard of ours, though. Is it not, sir?” he posed with a sardonic lift of one brow, to cover his chagrin over being so toadying. And so obvious at it.

“Oh, it is,
indeed,
sir!” the other officer agreed heartily, equally taken by the drollery of it all. “Hypocrisy in the service of one's career is no vice at all. One must simply be aware of when, and most importantly,
to whom,
one is the canting toad. Will you take tea with me, sir?”

By late afternoon, the Waiting Room was just as crowded, though at least a third of its denizens, who hid their impatience (or their dismay) behind poses of bemused boredom, stoic sternness or glum patience, were new arrivals. And Lewrie's name still had not been called. Fearing he'd miss his grand moment to ascend to the Board Room, or at least receive his orders in writing from a harried clerk, he had not even dared take time away to dine, not even as far as the inner courtyard, where one might buy dubious victuals off vendors' carts beyond the curtain wall and portal. His innards were growling by then, much as they had when he was an underfed midshipman. And the gallons of tea he had taken aboard! When a secretary at last announced that the day's business was at an end, he forgot dignity, and notions of rank, to outrun half a dozen dozy post-captains to “the jakes,” where he passed water prodigiously as a cart horse, for a rather
long
time.

Tomorrow, he told himself, as he plodded, swell-footed after standing since breakfast, for Whitehall Steps and a boat back to his lodgings. Tomorrow'll be my day.

C H A P T E R 2

T
he
Admiralty's letter had been penned on the 20th, and Lewrie had received it on the 22nd, arriving in person on the morning of the 23rd. Yet, by the morning of February 1, his “tomorrow” had yet to come. To save money, they had removed to Willis's Rooms, in New Bond Street, down at the fashionable end, closest to his old haunts around St. James's. Closer by road to Whitehall, too, so Alan could hire a one-horse hack to and from, for less than his ferryman cost daily.

He was completely fagged out, again, of course. Caroline had delighted him with yet another night of honeymoon passion, and that after a public-subscription ball at Ranelagh Gardens; a night of fine food, music alternating between patriotic and lushly romantic, and an almost palpable aura of frenetic enthusiasm. Young men in uniforms had suddenly sprung from everywhere, and young ladies to match, torn between tears of separation and last-opportunity wantonness.

Caroline had come down to their common parlour in a new ball gown, a caprice of the times, like some Grecian goddess sprung from the frieze of a precious, ancient urn. Her gown was closer fitting, almost a sheath, with fewer petticoats, and scandalously hemmed
above
the toes, almost to her ankles, with an artfully ragged turn-back to reveal the lace of one petticoat. Her waistline was very high, her bodice low-scooped to reveal décolletage,
sleeves short and gauzy, all but baring arms and shoulders. And about her neck she wore a red-velvet riband choker. What fixed his intense, open-mouthed stare was her hair—it had turned into a tangled nest of Medusas, tousled, ratted, snarled and dangled in crimped ringlets.

“What the
blazes?
”
he'd gawped. Caroline had turned herself into a cross between a Dago peasant and a Covent Garden whore who'd had a rather hard night of it!

“All the rage,” Caroline had chuckled, pirouetting for him. “It is
‘à la victime,'
dearest. Like the French aristocrats in the tumbrils going to the guillotine? The riband . . . for poor, beheaded King Louis and Marie Antoinette. You . . . you do not care for it?” She asked hesitantly, losing her gay demeanour and her confidence.

“My word!” he gasped. “It's so . . .” He had been about to say that he did not, in the
least,
care for his wife to go out so scandalously attired, sure she would be hooted, and dunged, by the Mob. Yet seven years “Active Service” with her, standing “Watch-And-Watch” on their quarterdeck, warned him he'd crush her if he told her what he really thought. Hoping such clothes were indeed “all the rage,” he decided to brazen it out and agree to deem it Fashion.

And . . .

Damme if she
don't
look fetchin', like a whole new woman, Alan had thought; fetchin' enough to
eat
. . . on the
spot!
Wanton, bold and brazen. Always been favourites o'
mine,
God help me. No sober-sided matron tonight! Aye, I think I do like it, after all. Brand new, as smart as paint . . . an' triced up like a present, to be unwrapped.

“Caroline!” he'd said at last, beaming forced, but total, approval. “It's so different,
you
look so . . . ! So deuced handsome. Lovely! Surely, I'm the luckiest man in England tonight. Gawd, come 'ere, you. Let me shew you how much I adore it. So artfully . . . uhm, artless!”

And to the titters and blushes of the house staff at Willis's, her maid's and Cony's smiles, he had taken her in his arms and given her a long, rewarding kiss, right there in the public rooms.

And his fears had been groundless. At the ball, there had been ladies, some with barely a jot of Caroline's sublime face and form, in
à la victime
mode, some carrying it so far as to look as bedraggled as Irish peasants. And flesh; more flesh bared that night by younger ladies (and high-priced courtesans) than a man might see had he owned a “knocking-shop,” all of which inflamed Lewrie's lustful humours.

They'd drunk Frog champagne as if it were a patriotic duty to expunge the last trace from the British Isles, danced together round after round, had circulated 'round the rotunda, talking too loudly, laughing too gaily, greeting old acquaintances. And had gone home, after a midnight collation, for that longed-for “unwrapping.”

“It's war!” The rumour began, just about eleven in the morning. The traffic in messengers through the lobby and foyer, up the stairs to the Board Room and offices, increased; and those couriers sent out with dispatch cases and bundles of papers were in more haste than was their usual wont. Elderly Admiral Howe made an appearance, almost arm in arm with Lord Chatham, the First Lord, on the way upstairs, whispering and frowning grave, dyspeptic stoicism.

“It's war with the Frogs!” Hopefuls began to gossip, breathless with barely subdued excitement, their eyes bright as famished hounds at the prospect of scraps.

“Heard the latest?” one boasted, as if he had. “France marched into Holland yesterday. Their ambassador's packing his traps. We'll declare by midafternoon. War at last! Employment at last!”

“No, no . . . 'twas Austria,” decried a second officer, refuting that round of news when it got to him. “Prussia, Naples . . . that last decree from Paris, 'bout supporting republican insurrections anywhere in Europe . . . they're all coming in as a coalition, 'cause of that.”

“Did they march into the Austrian Netherlands yet?”

“It'd be about time, should you ask me. There's their General Coburg, with a
real
army . . .”

“Finest in Europe,” opined several together.

“ . . . sitting on their hands nigh on a whole year,” continued the speaker, “feared of a tagrag-and-bobtail horde o' Frog peasants—led by former corporals, so pray you—'stead o' kickin' their arses out o' their territories a week after the invasion.”

“We
should have declared when France took Antwerp,” another anonymous strategist declared strongly. “Why, we might as well give up the Continental,
and
the Baltic trade, else. What's next on the Frogs' menu? Amsterdam . . . Copenhaven . . . Hamburg?”

Finally a commodore, fresh from the seat of power in the Board Room, came down the stairs, and was almost mobbed for information. He held up a hand to silence their fervent queries.

“The true facts which obtain, sirs . . .” he announced solemnly. “Very early this morning, His Majesty's Brig o' War
Childers,
standing off-and-on without the harbour of Brest, was fired upon by French batteries. Word has reached us by the semaphore towers that she was struck several times by heavy round-shot.
Childers
will come in, to display her damage, and the French round-shot . . . in her timbers, and upon her decks.”

“But,
are
we at war, sir?” several officers demanded.

“Better you should ask of Lord Dundas, or Lord Grenville, for that, sirs,” the commodore rejoined, snippish at their lack of deference to a senior officer, and their lack of decorum. “The Secretaries of State, and the Foreign Office . . . our Sovereign and Parliament, will best answer.” The commodore glared them to silence, harrumphed a last broadside of displeasure, settled his waistcoat, and stalked away to gather his things.

“It's come!” Alan Lewrie muttered to himself, feeling a thrill run up his spine to be
there,
on such a momentous occasion. Secretly pleased, though, to know there would be no more indecision, no more delays. Soon he would be aboard a ship again. The time for half-measures and tentative mobilisation was ended. “By God, it's come!”

“It's war!” a lieutenant nearby cried exultantly, lifting his arms in glee. “Glorious war, at last!”

Lewrie cocked his head to peer at him searchingly, as he and his compatriots pummeled each other on the back and chortled happily. Of course, he was very young, the lieutenant, he and all his fellows in badly tailored, ill-fitting “pinchbeck” uniforms. His sword was a cheap Hamburg, not even ivoried or gilded, with a brass grip sure to betray him and turn in his grasp were his palms ever damp.

Second or third sons, the honourably penniless, with no means of livelihood but the sea, and warfare. For these desperately eager young men, peace had been a death sentence, stranding them miserly and sour on half-pay and annual remittance, perhaps, of less than fifty pounds altogether. But war, now . . . !

Prize money, full pay, loot from captured ships, and a chance to practice their sea-craft, to gain advancement . . . to be
noticed
at last. Weaned as they were, as Lewrie had been, on personal honour, on “bottom” so bold they'd dare Death itself to display gay courage, risk life and limb for undying fame and glory . . .
or fall
gloriously at the very moment of a famous victory . . . well, now!

Surely, Lewrie thought; the fools
must
recall the dangers, the fevers . . . the rancid food, foul living conditions . . . storms and peril! They weren't ignorant midshipmen, starry-eyed and joining their first ship! They'd gone months without a letter, years of separation, seen shipmates slaughtered, scattered in pieces like an anatomy lesson at a teaching hospital, hopelessly wounded men passed out the gun ports alive to clear the fighting decks, dead sewn up in shrouds . . . or the permanently crippled amputees, the blind, the . . . !

'Course, there's more'n a
few
thought me perverse, for sneerin' at death-or-glory. No one, in his
right
mind, goes out of his way to die a hero, does he? Leastways, I didn't. Not to say that Fortune didn't have her way with me, whether I wished or no. I mean, dead is
dead,
for God's sake, and what's the bloody point of . . .

“Lewrie?” A voice interrupted his fell musings. “Would Lieutenant Lewrie be present? Alan Lewrie, Anglesgreen, Surrey . . . ?”

“Here!” Lewrie shouted in a loud quarterdeck voice, putting aside all his foul, ungentlemanly, un-English sarcasms and forebodings at once. “Tomorrow” was here!

“The Deputy Secretary, Mister Jackson, will see you upstairs, Lieutenant Lewrie,” an old and ink-stained senior writer informed him. “Would you kindly step this way, sir?”

George Jackson, Esquire's offices were a smaller adjunct to the First Secretary's, on the same floor as the Board Room. Lewrie presented himself, fingers twitching to seize the packet of orders which would be his passport. His Fortune.

“Your servant, sir,” Lewrie coaxed, to gain the man's notice.

“Ah? Lewrie, well,” Jackson said, barely looking up from the burgeoning mounds of documents on either side of his tall clerking-desk, behind which he slaved standing up. He looked down immediately, though, to cluck his lips over an ineptly turned phrase, perhaps some ink smudge, or a clumsy or illegible example of penmanship. “I have your orders, sir. Hmm . . . these, aye.”

“Thank you, sir.” Lewrie beamed, accepting the folded sheaf of vellum which one busy hand extended to him. He opened them eagerly, to see to which ship, what sort of ship, he would be assigned.

“Bloody hell?” escaped his lips as he beheld the concise words. “Excuse me, Mister Jackson, sir. There must be some mistake. I'm for the
Impress
Service?
Me,
sir? 'Mean t'say—!”

“You wish to question the wisdom of our Lords Commissioners, do you, Lewrie?” Jackson countered quickly, rewarding him with a tiny
moue
of disgust.

“Sir, I'm not so old I
dodder!
”
Lewrie rejoined with some heat. “My sight is excellent, I've all my limbs . . . I'm sound, in wind and limb! Hale as a dray horse, sir. With all my teeth, which is more'n
some
may boast! Sir, the Impress Service is for those who—”

“If we're not at war with France this very instant, young sir, we shall be by nightfall,” Jackson fussed, giving Lewrie only half of his distracted attention. “No, no. Redo this section before . . . this whole page, in point of fact, before it goes to Mr. Stephens. Now, Lewrie . . . should there have been an error, which I most surely doubt, you may correspond with us from your new posting to amend it. Prevail 'pon your patrons to write us . . . but
at
this instant, we need to man the Fleet. The bulk still lies in-ordinary, and must be got to sea! Orders have come down for a
hot
'press,' Admiralty Protections to be waived, and that requires the most immediate reinforcement for the Impress Service. Else merchant seaman will escape our grasp, and England's ‘Wooden Walls' will continue to languish for want of hands! I do not originate orders, Lewrie, I only inscribe them and pass them on. Bloom where you're planted, for the nonce, hey?”

“Sir . . . Mister Jackson, I implore you,” Lewrie continued, in a softer, more wheedling tone of voice, striving to sound reasonable . . . though what he wanted most at that moment was to leap across the desk and strangle the frazzled old fart. “There was a term of service, in the Far East, a covert expedition . . . '84 through '86. Notice was put in my packet to the effect that I was unemployable. To disguise my absence, so I could pose as a half-pay officer with no prospects who took merchant service. Were you to but look, sir . . . perhaps that is still in there, and influenced my assignment . . .”