Reefs and Shoals (4 page)

“No children,” Lewrie offered, with a hopeful note.

“Well, ha,” Rodgers flummoxed, shifting in his chair so hard it squeaked most alarmingly, clearly torn between joy for an old comrade, and his sense of the Conventions. If Lewrie had announced that Lydia was a Hindoo
nautch
-dancer he’d picked up in Bombay, a swarthy Hottentot maiden from the Kalahari, or a pox-raddled whore he’d tripped over in a Portsmouth alley, Benjamin Rodgers could not have been more stunned.

Should I have called her an actress, or a circus trick-rider?
Lewrie asked himself;
There’s a lotta that goin’ round, these days!

“You might’ve read about it in the papers, two or three years ago,” Lewrie went on, to fill the awkward silence. “Her husband was an utter beast, with the morals of a
drunk
monkey, but he could wear a good face in Publick, and fooled everyone. She’s well shot o’ him.”

“Oh, I don’t keep up with all the scandal-mongering newspapers,” Rodgers scoffed. “Gossip, rumours, and slurs don’t signify to me.”

“Unfortunately, Lydia suffered at their hands, even though her suit was … righteous,” Lewrie further admitted. “He’s ruined for all time, and she’s free, and didn’t deserve a jot of it. More innocent than me, ’bout that trial o’ mine for stealin’ slaves.”

“Oh, that ‘Black Alan’ thing,” Rodgers snickered.

“The worst was ‘Saint Alan, the Liberator’,” Lewrie said with a long sigh. “Even though Wilberforce, Hannah More, and their Abolitionist crowd are done with me, I’ll most-like never live
that
down. Ehm … I told Lydia I owe you a hearty shore supper, with
magnums
of champagne. If you’d care to meet her?”

“Damme if I haven’t
earned
one, after four months off Brest,” Rodgers exclaimed, “and I’m down t’my last four bottles o ‘bubbly’, to boot. Good God, stick with frigates, Alan, long as ya can. Once ya get a ship of the line, you’ll die o’ boredom, if the shoals and rocks and the Bay of Biscay don’t get ya first! You’re offering, and I’m accepting, gladly. And I’d be happy to meet your lady.”

“I probably owe ye
more
than one, just t’ make up for old times and a too-long absence,” Lewrie told him, glad that Benjamin
seemed
open to meeting Lydia, and waiting to form a first-hand opinion.

The Marine sentry outside the door to the quarterdeck rapped his musket on the oak-planked deck. “Midshipman Lewrie, SAH!” the sentry added with a stamp of his boots.

“Aha!” Captain Benjamin Rodgers said, rising from his chair. “About time, too. Enter!” he called out.

The door opened, admitting a gust of icy wind and a swirl of snow. Mr. Midshipman Sewallis Lewrie stepped in, hat under his arm and his boat-cloak dripping moisture.

“Captain, sir, I beg to report.…”

“Look who’s come calling, Mister Lewrie!” Rodgers boomed out.

“Hallo, Son,” Lewrie said, rising from his chair.

“Ha … hallo, Father,” Sewallis managed to say, his eyes as blared in surprise as a first-saddled colt.

CHAPTER FOUR

Sewallis was certainly surprised, but so was his father. At their last supper at the George Inn in the Spring of 1803, as Lewrie had been fitting out
Reliant,
Sewallis had just turned sixteen, and had been dressed in his usual dark and sombre style; well-tailored and neat, with his hair brushed and combed in close order, and his complexion had been the sort sported by those who lived mostly indoors, in libraries and schoolrooms. Now, he looked …

He looks like the poorest Mid ever born,
Lewrie told himself.

His errant eldest son’s uniform looked as if it had been plucked from a discard pile, or off the used rack, and had not been made from the best broadcloth to begin with. His white waist-coat and breeches were streaked with tar and slush stains. He’d done some growing, too, for his wrists showed below his coat cuffs, and the knee-buttons of his breeches were undone so his longer legs could bend without popping them off. Plain white cotton stockings, clunky and cracked shoes with dull pewter buckles, a linen shirt that was going pale tan …

Boy always
was
tight with his money,
Lewrie thought for an awkward moment, groping for a way to begin.

“Well, lad … how d’ye keep?” Lewrie said at last, stepping up to shake his son’s free hand.

“Main-well, Father … sir,” Sewallis replied with only a faint smile on his face, as if unsure that one was allowed.

“It’s good t’see ye alive and well, I’m bound,” Lewrie went on. He went so far as to embrace him in a brief hug, and clap him on the back. “Christ, though, I’d’ve thought Captain Rodgers’d feed ye more victuals. Buyin’ ‘millers’ from the bread-room, are you, t’make ends meet?”

“The Captain feeds us quite well,” Sewallis replied, grinning. “I’ve
tasted
bread-room rat, but I’m not partial.”

“I’d just promised your captain a grand shore supper, and I intended t’sport you to one, too, but … you look in more need of one, first,” Lewrie declared. “And a spell at a good tailor’s, to boot,” he added, stepping back to give his son a head-to-toe examination. “The wear-and-tear o’ blockade duty’s not done your kit any good.”

“I … I did not imagine that continual sea-duty would require grand rig, sir … Father,” Sewallis flummoxed. “We’ve seen no need of silk shirts and such … no port calls.”

Didn’t know he could dissemble, or dance round the truth, quite so well, either,
Lewrie thought;
He can’t claim that
I
kitted him out so poorly, or that he did it on his own.

“
Told
ye that ye needed better,” Lewrie lied to help him out. “The lad looks like Death’s-Head-on-a-Mopstick, hey, sir?” he asked as he turned to grin at Rodgers. “Ehm, I wonder if there was somewhere we could, ah…”

“Well…,” Benjamin Rodgers said, considering the matter. His great-cabins were
his,
not to be usurped, even by an old friend.

“No matter, we’ll go on deck,” Lewrie offered. “I won’t keep him from his duties long.”

“You’ll dine aboard with me, Alan?” Rodgers asked.

“My own cook’d be heart-broken if I let his efforts spoil,” Lewrie said, declining, “and, you’re short of champagne. Let me dine
you
out tomorrow afternoon, then I’ll be glad to accept your invitation. Once your stores are replenished, hey?” he added with a wink.

“Most suitable,” Rodgers agreed.

“Shall we go get snowed on?” Lewrie bade Sewallis.

*   *   *

The most exposed place to the raw weather was atop Rodgers’s great-cabins, on the poop deck aft of the mizen mast trunk; it would also be the last place
Aeneas
’s crew would be found at that hour.

“What in the world got into your head, lad?” Lewrie demanded. “Damme, don’t ye know the penalty for uttering a forgery? They
hang
people for it! Had ye been discovered, you’d have sunk your brother’s repute in the Navy, along with yours. Lied to your captain, lied to
Admiralty
 … a legal document, your—!”

“So, you’ve come to snatch me back, is that it, Father?” Sewallis interrupted, looking pinch-faced and miserable.

Lewrie glared at him, locking eyes with his son for a long bit. Sewallis must have gained
some
gumption in the Fleet, for the longer his father frowned, the firmer and more determined the son’s face became.

“No,” Lewrie relented, after another long moment. “It’s much too late for that. If I dragged you ashore by your ears, it would all come out, and you’d be in the ‘quag’ up to your neck. You
could
pass it off as a lark, back at your school, but … I doubt the authorities would think so. ‘Least said, soonest mended’. Or, as your granther says, ‘you’ve made your bed, and now must lie in it’.”

Sewallis did not say his thanks aloud, but his countenance brightened, and he nodded his head as he took in and released a long breath.

“Why the Devil
did
you do it?” Lewrie asked. “The one letter ye wrote me never explained.”

“For Mother,” Sewallis baldly stated. “I told you why I
wished
to serve, at that last supper we all had, the night before you sent Hugh aboard
his
ship. The Navy, the Army, in a line regiment or the Yeomanry militia. For a bit, I even considered finding a recruiting sergeant’s party, and going as a volunteer … or signing aboard for the first ship that would have me.”

“Oh, for God’s sake!” Lewrie blurted. “As a bloody
soldier
? Or a Landsman lubber? Were ye
completely
daft?”

Even
my
father wasn’t
that
cruel t’me.
…
I went to sea as a Midshipman!
Lewrie recalled his “pressing” into the Fleet in 1780, so his grandmother Lewrie’s expected inheritance could be used to pay off Sir Hugo’s creditors, with him thousands of miles away and unknowing.

“I
told
you all, I wished to avenge Mother’s murder. I wanted to fight the French and make them pay,” Sewallis said with some heat.

“And, have you, so far?” Lewrie skeptically asked.

“Well, not so far,” Sewallis admitted with a shrug and a shy grin. “The cowards sit at anchor in Brest, and won’t come out to face us. Do they assemble in the outer road, we stand in within sight and they slink back to the inner, letting a good slant of wind go to waste. Then the Westerly gales come, and we have to stand off windward.”

He
talks
like a sailor, at least,
Lewrie considered.

“Are you disappointed by life in the orlop cockpit?” he asked his eldest, as they paced from the taffrail lanthorns to the railings and ladders that led down to the quarterdeck and back.

“It’s much like school, really,” Sewallis told him, opening up, now that he was sure that he would not be exposed as a forger and sent ashore as a fraud. He even sounded “chirpy” and amused. “I was John New-come, but I’ve been that before. I’ve learned to shrug off all the japes, or find ways to get my own back, d’ye see, sir. I paid heed to the cautions you told Hugh, to ready him for sea, so…” He heaved off a shrug and another brief smile. “Like any dormitory, there will be dullards, clever ones, spiteful ones, bullies, and victims. I get by.”

That
don’t sound rosy,
Lewrie thought, frowning to imagine that Sewallis was too mild-mannered and reticent to stand up for himself.

“Any real problems? Anyone who gives ye special grief?”

“We have made our accommodations,” Sewallis cryptically replied, returning to his usually grave self. “Call it a truce, if you will, sir. There’s only the one—I name no names—but, he is beastly to one and all, to the ship’s people as well, and the Captain has his eyes upon him. He’s failed two Post-Captains’ Boards already, so he may not be long in the Navy,” Sewallis said with a wink.

“That, or the oldest Mid going,” Lewrie replied with a laugh. “I’ve met a man, fourty or more years old, and
still
a Midshipman. Stood your ground … faced him down, did ye?” Lewrie asked.

“Something like that, aye sir,” his son said, rather proudly.

“Damn my eyes, Sewallis,” Lewrie said with a sigh, coming to a stop in the back-and-forth stroll. “When my father wrote and told me you’d run away to sea, I didn’t think you’d be up to it. You always struck me more suited to the Law or something suitable for the eldest son, and the heir to whatever I leave. I didn’t
want
this for you. A second son, like your brother, Hugh, aye, but that’s what
he’s
always wanted. I thought you’d be happier ashore, in your books, or…”

“I know, sir,” Sewallis glumly agreed. “I’ve known for a long time that I’m not as … rambunctious as Hugh. Not as suited to be like you. That you never quite knew what to do with me, when you were back from the sea, and…”

“Damme, d’ye think I loved ye less than your brother?” Lewrie exclaimed, aghast that Sewallis felt that way; aghast, too, to confess that sometimes, yes, he had. Hugh had been so much “all boy” that he had been so much easier to understand, and to relate to.

Sewallis said nothing to that; he just stood erect, shivering in the cold snow, and frowning.

“Hell if I did, Hell if I
do
, son!” Lewrie declared, flinging his arms round his eldest and pulling him close. “I love both of you, and I’m
proud
of both of you. I can’t say that I
understand
you, now and again, or approve of ev’rything you do.”

He stepped back, still gripping Sewallis by his upper arms.

“No father wants t’hear his children’ve gone and done something daft, Sewallis. Knowin’ how hard life at sea is, d’ye think I wished
both
my boys t’be at risk? D’ye think I don’t worry and fret over all that could harm either of you? When you see your first horse to the gallop, you went off to your first school…!”

“Thank you, Father,” Sewallis said at last, looking happy and relieved. “Thank you for that. I can stay aboard?”

“Benjamin Rodgers thinks you’re shapin’ well, and I trust his judgement, so, aye. You’re on your own bottom. And when he gives ye leave t’come ashore with me for a day, you’ll come back aboard much better dressed. We can’t let ye continue on so ‘rag-tag-and-bobtail’.”

“I must admit I look forward to a larger coat,” Sewallis said with an outright laugh.

“Let you stuff yourself at the George Inn, again, and fill up your sea-chest with goodies, too,” Lewrie promised. “Have scones and tea, or a
huge
breakfast before, with me and … uhm. With Mistress Stangbourne.”