H. M. S. Cockerel (5 page)

Caroline,
he thought, at last. What to say to her? Sorry, dear, but I'd crawl to Whitehall on my knees to escape the boresome shit my life's become? Dear as you are to me, dear as Life is with you and the boys, it isn't you—'tis me?

He tossed off his rum impatiently, steeling himself for the hurt words he was sure would come. He set the glass on the mantel, reached up and took down his sword—not a proper officer's straight smallsword but a hanger, a slightly curved, single-bladed hunting sword, much like a light, elegant cutlass. It had stayed hung there for years, far out of reach of inquisitive little hands. There was dust on the royal-blue leather scabbard, and it had not gotten the strenuous attention their tableware did from the maids. He ran his fingers over the slightly tarnished silver lions-head pommel, the dark blue hilt wrapped in silver wire, the belt hook on the chase, the front and side handguards formed like argent seashells.

He half-drew it to test its edge against a thumbnail. But it was a Gill's, a fine blade, and had lost none of its keenness. No matter how long it had hung, neglected and idle.

B O O K I I

Nee vero ipse metus curasque resolvere ductor, sed maria
aspectans “heu qui datus iste deorum sorte labor nobis!”

Now verily did the leader himself forget all fears
and cares, but gazing on the seas, “Alas,” he cried,
“how hard a task is here set us by heaven's will!”

Argonautica
Book IV, 703–705
Valerius Flaccus

C H A P T E R 1

I
f
great London also bore loathsome reeks of its own particular devising, at least they were urbane and cosmopolitan. And Lewrie, in his mounting excitement to be returning to the city of his birth, and gateway to the wider world beyond, took no notice of them. Farm lands and villages got closer together, villages became towns, until once they had passed Guildford, the conurbations crowded each other until they seemed one vast burgeoning of the capital, brimming over with bustling enterprise, like a boiling pot.

Lodging was almost impossible to find. All the coaching inns were full, as were the private residences which would let rooms, and the use of the parlours, to guests. Sparsely furnished rooming houses were out of the question. Even those dubious “rooms to let”—which usually signified hourly rates for the sporting crowd— were taken by officers of both Army and Navy being called back to their colours.

They finally alit upon a hideously expensive posting house just before dark, after hours of rumbling through the streets. It
was near King's College and Somerset House, on Catherine Street, just off the Strand. Being a posting house, though, accustomed to travelers who came to town in their own coaches, it could be expected to be clean and quiet enough to suit the most fastidious high gentry or titled visitor, and set a decent table.

At twelve shillings sixpence a day, it ought to, Lewrie carped, to himself; that's more'n twice my active-commission lieutenant's pay!

They.

Caroline never failed to amaze him. Where he had expected the tears and recriminations of an abandoned wife, accusations of running away from familial responsibilities . . .

Damme, she was packed herself and ready to travel near as fast as I was, he thought admiringly. Babes bustled off to Granny Charlotte and off we jounced! Himself, Cony, Bodkins as coachee, Caroline and her maidservant, all jumbling together as the closed coach clattered over winter-hard roads so crossrutted they were fortunate to still have a collective tooth in their heads!

Once settled, Lewrie wrote a letter to his solicitor, Matthew Mountjoy, to make arrangements for Caroline's, and the farm's, allowance whilst he was at sea. He also penned a note on his account with Coutts & Co., bankers, for ready funds, and future drafts to be sent overseas; all of which Cony would deliver on the morrow.

Then a quick, quiet supper and up to bed, so he would be well rested for his appearance at the Admiralty. He donned his night-shirt and slipped into a warm bedstead, wondering how often in future he'd have the luxury of retiring completely undressed, of enjoying a full night's sleep, instead of two- and three-hour snatches between crises. Wondering what sort of ship he'd be assigned to . . . a frigate was his dearest wish. How slow and cumbersome a 3rd Rate ship of the line is by comparison, how plodding and dull, and . . . hello?

Caroline snuffed the candles (beeswax, a round half-dozen to the room, and each charged for what three would cost in the country!) and slid in beside him. Her head found its usual resting place upon his shoulder, her arms encircled him as he extended his right arm to nestle her warmly close. The light, citrony aroma of freshly dabbed Hungary Water enveloped him. Caroline slid one hand up his chest to his neck, to the back of his head. With sinewy strength, she turned his face to hers and their lips met in the dark as she grappled him nearer, as she slid upward, as she cast a slim thigh across his lap. Seductively, yet fiercely, her kisses searing and intense as sobs.

“I could not let you go away,” she whispered in a raspy breathlessness, “with last night your remembrance of me. God knows how long you'll be gone, or how soon . . . how little time we . . . !”

All said between long, searching, open-mouthed kisses, breath hot and cow-clover musky, her soft, smooth flesh flushed and warming as Alan slid her silk nightgown to her waist to fondle, to possess that peachlike bottom, that butterfly softness of her inner thighs, that fount of all pleasures . . .

With almost frantic impatience, Caroline sat up on her knees and one arm and shucked her nightgown, tossing it to the four winds. Reached down as though to rip his bedclothes nigh enough away, to lean down over him, take his hands and guide them to her breasts as she pressed her mouth to his once more, her tongue almost scalding.

“All night, I swear it!” She almost wept. “All the time they give us!”

“God, I love you, Caroline!” he muttered as he took hold of the upswelling of her hips to guide her down to meet him. “I love you!”

“Oh, Alan, dearest . . . I love you!” she vowed. “Love me now, I beg you!
My
remembrance! Ahhh, yess!”

S'pose they'll not see me
that
early, he most happily thought; God, I can get a whole
day's
sleep in the Waiting Room, more'n like!

Even at half past six of the morning, London's streets were thronged with mongers and their wares fresh from the market, wagons and drays, livestock, weary prostitutes and pickpockets, revelers on their way home to bed, shopkeepers and clerks on their way to work. The bulkhead shops were already open, as were the greengrocers and butchers. Coal-heavers were out, house servants or valets to fetch their masters' or mistresses' breakfasts from ordinaries or taverns. It was quicker for Lieutenant Lewrie to saunter down Catherine Street, cross the busy Strand, with a trained ear attuned to the rude cries of “Have care!” or “By y'r leave, sir!” of coachees, careening wagoners, or sedan-chair bully bucks. To stand still, dumb as a fart in a trance, even on the footpaths, was an invitation to getting trampled. And take a boat to the Admiralty.

At the foot of the bank where Charing Cross ended there were stairs to the riverside—slimy, mucked and erose, and worn down by long usage. As soon as he was spotted, the cacophonous din set in, reminding Lewrie of a hunting pack who'd cornered the fox.

“Oars, oars!” cried the boatmen. “Scullers, scullers, sir! Tuppence!” countered those with smaller dinghys featuring a stern-sweep as propulsion.

“Oars,” he answered back, scanning the flotilla and selecting a bullock of a fellow, who sported the crossbelt, brassard and coat-of-arms of the Lord Mayor.

“Whitehall Steps . . . sixpence, sir,” the fellow nodded as he boarded the small craft. “Tide'n wind be fair 'is mornin', sir.”

“Hard not to tell,” Lewrie commented as he settled himself on a forward thwart, his coin out and ready.

“Aye aye, sir,” the man crinkled a sun-wrinkled smile as he shoved off and shipped his oars in the tholepins. “Young man wearin' King's Coat . . . canvas packet unner 'is arm . . . well, sir!”

“You were in the Navy?” Lewrie asked.

“Both th' las' wars, sir. Landsman . . . ord'nary'n able seaman . . . 'en gun cap'm . . .” he related between powerful strokes, seated to his front, knee-to-knee with Alan. “Quarter-gunner . . . Yeoman o' th' Powder 'fore 'twas done. Now 'ere come another war. Y'r welcome to it this time, sir. You an' all t'other young'uns. War 'fore th' week's out's my thinkin'. Can't 'llow th' Frogs t'spread 'eir pizen f'r long. Folks is stirred up enough a'ready, sir.”

“By leveling talk?” Lewrie inquired. His stretch of Surrey might as well have been in China, for all the rumors that missed him.

“Thom Paine, sir.” The old gunner beamed, tipping him a wink. “
Rights o' Man.
Correspondin' societies. That Thom Hardy feller an' all? Price . . . Priestley . . . dissentin' an' such. Learned t' read in th' Navy, I did, sir. Time on our hands so heavy an' all? 'Nough t' know all them Friends o' the People societies' penny tracts is trouble. Wrote in th' same words'z anythin' wrote in France. 'At spells rebels an' combinations, sir. With so many folk outa work, an' wages so low when ya do get work, well . . . 'ear tell they've plotted secret committees, gone right over t' Paris itself!”

“Widespread, d'ye think?” Lewrie asked, morbidly intrigued.

“Not so much yet, sir. N'r by hard-handed men, d'ye see? Give 'em time, though . . . never thought I'd see 'at ‘Yankee-Doodle' madness took up in a
real
country!”

“But it doesn't upset you enough to . . . volunteer, I take it,” Lewrie said with a knowing smirk.

The waterman tapped the brassard on his chest which protected him from the Impress Service, and tipped Lewrie another and equally knowing wink. “I ain't
thet
stupid in me old age, sir!”

He paid off the waterman at the foot of Whitehall Steps, amid a swarm of other boats, of other officers reporting for duty. A walk up Richmond Terrace to thronging Whitehall, a stroll of about one hundred or more yards north up Whitehall, and he was there, before the curtain wall with its columns and blank stone facade between; before the deep central portal which led to the inner courtyard, beneath the pair of winged sea horses which topped the portal.

Admiralty! What a leviathan one single word implied. Ordnance Board, Victualling Board, Sick and Hurt Board, boards for control of ship's masters, of petty officers with warrants, of officers from lowly midshipmen to fighting admirals, port admirals, the Impress Service, HM Dockyards . . . cannon foundries, clothing manufacturies, pickling works for salt beef and pork, huge bakeries for untold tons of hard biscuit. And rope, tar, seasoned timber, paint, pewter messware, iron and bronze nails, pins and bolts, the copper industry for clean bottoms and defence against teredo worms. Sailcloth, slop clothing, leather works, sheath knives and marlinspikes, forks to cutlasses and boarding pikes . . . taken altogether, the needs of the Fleet, and the myriad of suppliers, contractors, jobbers—and thieves—who filled those needs, the Royal Navy was the single largest commercial enterprise in the British Empire. Which meant, of course, the civilized world. And one single word—Admiralty—spanned it all. Just as the Royal Navy would soon span the globe, the most efficiently armed, supplied and equipped military organization known to man. The enormity of the endeavour made even a cynic such as Lewrie take pause.

Until he got to the door, of course.

• • •

“Lewrie?” The long-term tiler sighed with a weary, frazzled air as he scanned his admittance list with one arthritic finger, and applied the other index finger's horny nail to ferret between mossy teeth. “Y'r
sure
they wish t'see ya, then, sir? However d'ya spell that? Doubya-Arr-Eye-Eeh, is it?” The tiler seemed offended that it wasn't some simpler name, perhaps. Or perhaps he was disappointed he had no wisp of fatty bacon left to suck on. Whichever it was, he made an open grimace of disgust. “Aye, y'r
listed,
”
he announced at last, almost grumbling with outrage to find Lewrie's name. “Go 'long in, sir. Take a pew wi' th' others, God help ya.”

“You have no idea when . . .” Lewrie began, after heaving a tiny sigh of frustration, anxious to know what hour, or which day, his appointment might be.

“Run outa ideas, summer o' '78, sir, when I took this position,” the tiler shot back impatiently. “There's one lad, midshipman he was, was three full year warmin' 'is backside in yonder. Will-ya-notgo-
in,
sir-there's-a-horde-o'-others-waitin'-you-next-yes-
you,
sir!”

Lewrie stifled his retort, knowing it would do him no good, or even begin to penetrate the querulous tiler's thick hide. He entered, left his cloak with an attendant who was even surlier than the tiler, and “took a pew” in the infamous Waiting Room.

Early as it was, all the chairs, benches and sofas were taken by commodores, by post-captains, by commanders. Lowly scum such as he had perforce to stand, and in the draughtiest corners at that, as far from the fireplaces as rank and dignity would allow.

So much for a long nap, he sighed to himself. Without children to cock an ear to, he and Caroline had spent a night so passionate it rivaled their first days together as man and wife. And they had gone far past the point at which they might usually crash to sleep in utter exhaustion. He no longer held that thirty was
exactly
the dotage he'd feared. Truth to tell, he was quite proud of himself and his prowess, his endurance. But he was now paying for it. Once still, and hemmed in in the frowsty-warm Waiting Room, he was almost asleep on his feet, held up by the press of other nodding men's shoulders.

Except for the boisterous, Old Boys' Day jocularity which the rest displayed; the hummumm of an hundred men conversing, punctuated by cock-a-whoop laughter, calls of welcome, the “damn my eyes if it ain't . . . !” greetings of shipmates long separated, whether they'd despised the person greeted or not, after three years' commission elbow to elbow. And the clatter of scabbards as both clumsy and adroit slowly paced the room, tangling and untangling, taking or giving way. He dry-swabbed his face, shook himself, and made his way toward the steamy aroma of hot tea, gladly willing to kill for a cup.

“Mister Lewrie, sir!” cried a cheerful voice.

“Damn my eyes,” Lewrie called back, “if it ain't Hogue! A commission officer, now. How d'ye keep, hey?”