The Invasion Year (26 page)

The winds were contrary, as were the tides, so they all had to sleep aboard one night, Lewrie and Blanding given cramped dog-box cabins with narrow slatted berths, no larger than the accommodations that Lewrie had slept in when he was a junior Lieutenant. The berths were not the sort he was used to, either, for his did not swing from ropes bound to ring-bolts in the overhead deck beams, but was nailed to the inner hull plankings. Not only was the mattress as thin as a Devil’s bargain, little more comforting than two quilts doubled over, but the lack of swaying motion was irritating, and kept him up half the night. He had been
rocked
to sleep like a babe in its crib too many years … stillness felt un-natural, and he envied Pettus and his hammock on the lower deck with the other servants!

The morning brought a hearty breakfast, though, with kippers and eggs, thick toast, and scalding tea, and enough hot water in civilian measures for a scrub-up and a shave, with the luxury of even more tea on deck afterwards, lazing in perfect idleness, even going so far as to
lean
on the bulwarks in lubberly fashion as the packet made the bend into Greenwich Reach and plodded along past the Naval Hospital, Observatory, and Deptford Naval Dockyards. If Captain Blanding had had trouble sleeping, he gave no sign of it, bubbling over with boisterous
bonhomie
, tucking away a large breakfast, then enthusing over all the new construction at Deptford, and expressing the hope that, once he had been honoured with his knighthood, one of the 74-gunned Third Rates on the stocks would soon be his.

“I thought you were immoderately proud of
Modeste,
sir,” Lewrie commented, “and her turn of speed for a sixty-four.”

“Oh, I am, Lewrie!” Blanding responded, laughing out loud. “But one aspires to greater responsibilities, a larger command, perhaps the charge of a squadron of Third Rates.”

“I s’pose I’m too used to frigates, and their freedom,” Lewrie confessed as a servant came round with a fresh pot of tea. “If Admiralty thinks me worthy of squadron command, I’d prefer it to be a frigate squadron, with me in
Reliant
, or another Fifth Rate thirty-eight.”

“Well, I dare say you’re a dashed good frigate captain now, sir,” Blanding allowed, “and you’ve done very well by me, but … promotion and greater responsibility comes to us all, sooner or later, should we live long enough … and not come a cropper sometime in one’s career.
Reliant
’s your third frigate?”

“Fourth, actually, sir,” Lewrie told him. “Though I had
Savage
only a year or so … before the trial, and my being relieved, and got
Thermopylae
as a last minute replacement for her captain when he fell ill. I’ve a year and a half left in
Reliant
before she’ll need to be put in the graving docks for a refit.”

“Make the most of it, then, Lewrie, for there’s most-like some Third Rate in your future,” Blanding said with a shrug. “Your family will be joining you at Court?”

“Only my father, sir,” Lewrie said. “He’s the only one in the vicinity, given the short notice we got. Yours, sir?”

“Oh, there’s the wife, and my eldest son … he’s just taken Holy Orders, and is still angling for a good parish. I’m assured he will find a post as a vicar, not a rector.”

Why’s that not a s’rprise?
Lewrie cynically thought. Church of England politics and “interest” was as fierce as any, and one’s posting could be as profitable as a government office. Rectors were much like Lieutenants when it came to prize-money in the Navy; their share of the tithes, their salary, the size and profitability of the manse and the farm that came with it, the glebe, would keep a man in comfort, but it was the vicar who got the “captain’s” larger share of the tithe,
and
a share of the tithes from the rectors under him. The Blandings were
ferociously
well-connected and well-churched … look at Reverend Brundish, for instance, Captain Blanding’s personal Chaplain, who must be
very
well paid to come away from a profitable vicarage with all the huntin’, shootin’, dancin’, fishin’, and steeplechasin’ in which he revelled! God knows the
Navy
didn’t pay Chaplains pittance!

“My daughter will be there … she and the wife will take advantage of their time in London to expose her to Society,” Blanding went on, winking and grinning as he added, “And find her a suitable husband if the market’s good. Brundish’ll accompany us, o’ course … coached up to London two days ago, to prepare the ground, and see to the missus and my girl,” Blanding added when he saw Lewrie raise a brow in question. “Care t’dine with us beforehand?”

God, that sounds tedious!
Lewrie thought.

“Perhaps after, sir. I’ve people to see. Solicitor, my bank, Admiralty, and some old school friends,” Lewrie begged off, hoping for a long delay before he would
have
to socialise with the Blanding clan. “And, there’s the mystery of what Sir Harper meant by ‘best uniform
and
Court dress.’ One hopes his promised letter sent t’my lodgings will be explanatory … and not too costly.”

“Where will you lodge, sir?” Blanding asked.

“The Madeira Club, sir,” Lewrie told him, explaining that the place was a bachelor’s refuge, respectable and clean, for the middling sort of gentleman. “Wonderful wine cellar and grand victuals, but not open to gambling. They retire early at the Madeira. You, sir?”

“Brundish’s brother Charles is a bishop at Hampstead, and has graciously offered us the use of his London house,” Blanding told him, “in Bruton Street.”

Lewrie tried to place Bruton Street, and
thought
it was south of Oxford Street, safely distant from his lodgings, unless Blanding was intrigued by the name of his favourite coffee house, the Admiral Benbow, at the corner of Baker and Oxford streets, and blundered in.

And why am I not s’prised that Brundish is kin to a bishop?
he asked himself.

“Aye, after might be best, after all, Lewrie,” Blanding allowed with a sage nod. “Family to see, what? Doings to catch up on in my long absence? But! Once it’s done, I’d much admire could you and your father join us for a celebration supper … after we go to Westminster Abbey or Saint Paul’s to give thanks to the Good Lord.”

They let
my
sort in church?
Lewrie wondered, but agreed to his superior officer’s suggestions, whether he cared for them or not.

*   *   *

“Thought we’d take a
cabriolet
this morning,” his father said as Lewrie descended the steps at the Madeira Club to the kerb, where a light, two-horse carriage awaited with its weather-proofed convertible top folded down above the boot. “And ain’t
you
a picture, what? Like a belle goin’ to a ball, haw haw!”

One more reason I don’t much like the old bastard,
Lewrie told himself as a liveried footman opened the kerb-side door and let down the metal steps.

“Oh, stop yer gob,” Lewrie growled.

“Get up on the wrong side o’ the bed, this morning, did ye?” Sir Hugo St. George Willoughby gravelled as Lewrie got in. “Or are the breeches too tight in the crutch?”

Lewrie spread a clean-looking lap blanket on the leather bench seat before sitting down, just to be safe.

“At such short notice, they are a bit snug,” Lewrie admitted as the footman closed the door and folded up the steps. “Daft, too dear, and if God’s just, I’ll only wear them this once. Silk breeches, mine arse!”

“Just like a belle’s ball gown … daft, too dear, and good for only one appearance in a London Season,” Sir Hugo remarked.

After landing in the Pool of London, taking a hack to the Madeira Club, and un-packing, Lewrie had found the ornate formal letter that Sir Harper Strachan had promised. Immediately upon reading it, he had begun to curse blue blazes. He would need a new pair of shoes in that idiotic slipper style, new white silk stockings, these damned silk breeches, and all the help the valet staff of the Madeira Club could offer alongside Pettus’s best efforts. His best formal uniform coat, too long kept in a sea-chest, had to be aired out to rid it of ship-stink, but nothing could restore the gloss of its gold lace trim that had gone a sickly green at sea. A tailor who specialised in military and naval uniforms had to remove the old and sew on new, damned near overnight. Brushing it down, Pettus had gotten a whole handful of cat fur off it! He’d had to purchase two new epaulets to adorn his shoulders, too. A new silk shirt, a new black neck-stock, his best white waist-coat sponged down and pressed … the neck-stock, too, that very morning, after a wetting, a starching, and a time for drying before it was pressed with a hot iron.

“The latest thing, sir,” the borrowed valet told him, winking. “And all the crack about town, these days. All the dandies are trying to emulate some fellow name of Brummell when it comes to stocks, whose own’re marvels. Flat and sharp-edged, ’stead of ropy-looking after a bit. I’ll bind it on last, if you don’t mind, sir?”

He’d been in need of a haircut, long overdue, in point of fact, and a close shave that morning by another’s skillful hand, instead of shaving himself. There had been a vial of West Indies scent for his smooth-shaven cheeks … and a discreet dash or two on his coat, which was still redolent of salt, tar, pea soup farts, and mildew. At least the scent was made from the leaves of the bay tree, and wasn’t all that sweet.

The one item over which he almost balked was the wig. “Look, I only need it the once, for God’s sake,” Lewrie had told the wig-maker after trying several on, and discovering to his chagrin that with one of those follies on his head, his hat wouldn’t fit! “I haven’t worn a wig since 1780! I look like a ‘Macaroni’!”

In point of fact, before his father had crimped him into the Navy that very year, sure that Grandmother Lewrie in Devon would turn “toes up” and leave a fair amount of her fortune to Alan and he could pay off his creditors with young Lewrie half the world away and all un-knowing, Lewrie
had
been a Macaroni fop, right down (or up) to the wee hat perched atop a too-big wig!

“Couldn’t I just rent one for a day or two?” Lewrie had pled.

“Now what’d my reputation be, did I allow that, sir?” the wig-maker had disagreed. “Letting wigs out and them coming back with fleas, or lice, and the next customer getting infested? No, sir. It must be purchase only. You’re to be presented at Court? I’ll not put shoddy on you, sir … what would people say of me? Try this one, pray do.”

He had found one that was sleekly swept back on both sides and allowed his hat to sit at almost the proper level, though Lewrie’s own sideburns and the short four-inch queue that he wore bound with black ribbon at the nape of his neck were visible. The wig-maker had suggested that he pin it on with ladies’ hat pins, just to be safe.

So that’s how Strachan did it!
Lewrie had marvelled. Sourly marvelled, really.

So there he sat in an open carriage, on display to the world in his new finery, with his hundred-guinea presentation sword at his hip, the one awarded by the East India Company for saving the small homeward-bound convoy in the South Atlantic, a few years before, when he’d still had the
Proteus
frigate. His gilt buttons were polished to mirror-like gleamings, those silly shoes blacked and buffed nigh to patent leather shininess, and all his clothes so restored, or new, that he feared the young imps of the London Mob would delight in covering him with dung and mud before they’d gone half a mile.

He stared at the sky, dreading rain, too. It had rained the day he’d arrived, though the last two had been dry, so maybe there would be no puddles to wade through when they alit at the palace.

If there are, will my father fling a cloak on ’em, like Walter Raleigh did for Queen Elisabeth?
he sourly wondered;
I doubt
that
!

“We’ll have to be brushed down, once we’re there,” Sir Hugo said with a squinty look. “Damn powdered wigs. S’pose the palace flunkies and catch-farts know what they’re about with whisks.”

“Ever been?” Lewrie asked him as they headed south down Baker Street, turning right onto Oxford Street, and bound for the shortest and most direct main route down Park Lane along Hyde Park.

“The once,” Sir Hugo allowed, picking lint from his coat. “When I got tapped and named a Knight of the Garter. Back when the King was saner than he is now, and ‘Prinny’ was a toddler. Horrid-stuffy, was ‘Farmer George’s’ Court in those days. In Publick, at least. My sort, well … ye’ll note they haven’t had me back for a brandy since.”

“Understandably,” Lewrie japed with a smirk.

“Don’t imagine
your
welcome will be a whit better, haw haw!”

Damme if he ain’t got it exactly right,
Lewrie thought.