A King's Trade (3 page)

He left the taffrails and paced up the starboard side of the quarterdeck, which was now the windward side, and a captain's rightful station alone, ‘til he was by the mizen shrouds, hooked an arm through them, and oversaw without interfering in such a wonderous display of seamanship from all officers and hands, ‘til the last brace, halliard, or jear was coiled, flaked down, and belayed on the pin-rails, and Mr. Langlie released all but the sailors in the Forenoon Watch from their stations. A quick cast of the knot-log proved that even on this light wind,
Proteus
was loping along at a decent seven knots, easily riding the quartering seas, slow-rocking more than hobby-horsing, and heeled no more than ten degrees according to the new-fangled clinometer, with the winds nearly full abeam.

The next mid-day might prove them level with the Lizard; half a day's sailing after that might, if the winds remained out of the West or Sou'west, move
them far enough below England's westernmost headland to turn East, and scud up the Channel to Portsmouth, there to deliver despatches from Halifax to the Port Admiral.

There to be stripped of his sword of honour and bound in irons, then hauled off to an ignominious Fate?

Liam Desmond on his uillean lap-pipes, the ship's fiddler, and a Marine fifer began to play a semi-lively old hymn. Unfortunately for Lewrie's already-fretful nerves, he recognised the title as “I Want a Principle.” Damned if he didn't, though he might have left it a tad late!

He pursed his lips, frowned heavily, and headed below and aft. Aspinall was still tending to those in need of his coffee-pot; Lewrie tossed off his own boat cloak, hat, and undid his coat, then sat down at his desk and dug his personal log out of the centre drawer, dipped one of his precious steel-nibbed (captured) French pens in the ink, and noted the time and date of Soundings, of shaping a new course; catching up on what the half-a-gale had carried away, what sails had split, and had to be replaced, which Mr. Rayne, their Sailmaker, thought he could repair, and what the cost in materials would be when the time came to pay
Proteus
off in a home dockyard, the war with France ended….

Mister Winwood has a sense of humour?
Lewrie was forced to gawp. Two years or more, and the Sailing Master couldn't seem to catch even the
broadest
jape…now this waggish witticism? For the suggestion for a thanksgiving hymn surely had been his. Lewrie knew the words as a poem written by a former Liverpool slave-ship captain, John Newton, who had been shipwrecked and enslaved himself on the African coast; the tune, though, sounded suspiciously close to “Nottingham Ale,” not a ditty he'd think popular with the fervently religious.
*

Apt, though,
he decided;
now we know where we are.
He could understand British tars singing so lustily, this close to home, but his “Free Black volunteers,” too?

The root of his troubles, those “volunteers,” a round dozen of them, who'd really been encouraged to meet his ship's boats one night in Portland Bight on
Jamaica's south coast, and escape a lifetime of slavery, chains, whips, and cruel misery, to join the Royal Navy under new aliases as “free men.”
Seemed
like a great idea, then, when his ship had been so short of hands after so many of his British tars had died of Yellow Jack, but now, though…

“Something
should,” Lewrie muttered; “lead ‘em home, very far from me,” he added under his breath. Listening to the harmonies of his Black sailors, no matter how loyally and stoutly they had served, he could not help but add a fretful “Damn ‘em!”

I
n retrospect, perhaps—and one could safely assume that retrospection was an activity at which Alan Lewrie had come to excel over the course of a few months (and just
might
have been acclaimed as the champion retro-spector of the age…were prizes given for such, of course)—he really should have twigged to the fact that something was “rotten in Denmark” when he received that extremely odd, dare we say
outré,
invitation from Capt. Nicely, back in the summer when he was still based out of Kingston, Jamaica, to wit: Capt. Nicely requested that
he
be dined-in aboard
Proteus
by Capt. Lewrie, not the other way round.

Well, Nicely was a kindly sort, though a bit of a bull in the china shop, an aggressive, “but me not buts” sort, so Lewrie had thought little odd about it, at the time. Capt. Nicely had played “Dutch Uncle” to him since their first meeting at Port-au-Prince in 1797 and had supported his activities, dismissing the vituperative charges that the dyspeptic Capt. Blaylock had tried to lay against Lewrie for not breaking off his bombardment of the rebel-slave army besieging the port of Mole St. Nicholas and giving Blaylock his mooring to try
his
hand at it. Nicely's dislike for Blaylock might have had a hand in it, for they'd heartily despised each other as hotly as the Devil hates Holy Water since their Midshipmen days.

Ever the encouraging and supportive sort was Nicely, even when he'd as good as “press-ganged” Lewrie into a knight-errant's crusade against those French Creole pirates who'd stolen one of Lewrie's prizes from the anchorage
at Dominica, even when he'd usurped
Proteus
right out from under him to be Nicely's “squadron of one” to chase them into Spanish Louisiana,
then
sending Lewrie up the Mississippi in civilian guise to hunt them on their home ground, shivering and farting with dread, and…

But, no…Lewrie had blithely shrugged it off as just one more quirk of a neck-or-nothing man. After all, he'd
survived
it, barely, and the expedition had fetched them all £200,000 to share, gained all participants—the leaders most especially—plaudits in London papers, and the gratitude of their superiors for a job well done. As for Capt. Nicely, it had gotten him out of the dry and thankless post of Staff Captain,
ashore
in Admiralty House on Kingston Harbour's Palisades, and gotten him back afloat in command of a mighty 44-gun frigate.
And,
let Nicely hoist a broad pendant as commander of a wee squadron—even if said broad pendant still bore a white ball to show Nicely was not
yet
a Commodore, due a Flag-Captain to run her.

Better yet, HMS
Proteus
had received orders assigning her, and her suddenly moderately-wealthy captain, to be part of that squadron of two frigates, a sloop of war, and two armed brigs, which would soon sail off on a new expedition to prowl the coasts of French Guiana and the Dutch isles off the shoulder of South America and the Spanish Main.

And, as captain of the only other frigate in the squadron, was not Lewrie second-in-command to Nicely, no matter that he had not yet attained the right to wear a second epaulet on his shoulders, and was still a Post-Captain of Less than Three Years' Seniority?

Given Capt. Nicely's knacky wits, and his bellicosity when it came to trouncing the King's enemies, it had promised to be a fruitful cruise…so long as Nicely didn't order Lewrie to sneak ashore as a Spanish grandee or mule-skinner and play spy one more time, that is.

Little wonder, then, that Lewrie had cocked his head over that invitation, had muttered something akin to “Hmmpf, well o' course,” and had tossed it into the scrap drawer, and didn't give the matter a second thought, except for what he should serve for a working dinner, and for how many. And, given how badly Capt. Nicely had fared aboard
Proteus
with Toulon and Chalky whilst Lewrie was away in New Orleans, what he should do with his cats.

It
did
strike Lewrie as odd that Capt. Nicely came aboard alone, with nary a one of the squadron's other captains in tow, not even his own First Officer, which had prompted two thoughts in Lewrie's head: first,
Oh, good… more leftovers for tonight's supper,
followed by
Oh, shit, he's got some harum-scarum plan in his
head, again!
A plan which might, indeed, require Lewrie to swot up on his Spanish, Dutch, or French, and quickly master plausible skills at donkey-tending!

Capt. Nicely had proved to be popular with the crew, his recent exploits earning every Man Jack a pretty penny, so it was with happy smiles and waving hats that
Proteus
's hands had turned out to welcome Nicely aboard, beyond the formality of the side-party, the shrilling bosuns' calls, and the stamping of Marines in full kit.

“Hallo, lads!” Capt. Nicely had joyfully cried, waving his own hat back at them. “Spent your prize-money, yet, you rogues, ha ha? Or, did you owe your Purser too much for tobacco, what?”

That had gotten him a laugh, and a jeer or two at their “Nip-Cheese,” Mr. Coote, as all Pursers were termed.

“Seeing as how ‘tis just
before
Seven Bells of the Forenoon,” Nicely had further said, “and
Proteus
is well-anchored, with none but the harbour watch to stand, with your captain's permission…?” he had looked over at Lewrie, cocking a brow ‘til Lewrie nodded his agreement, “I propose that you ‘Splice the Main Brace'!” Nicely had cried down to the waist, giving leave for every man and boy to have a full rum issue, with no sips or gulps owed among them to lower the brimming measure.

“And, do you come this way, sir,” Lewrie had offered, gesturing aft, “we'll ‘splice' our own. I've a case of fine French claret.”

“Delighted!” Nicely had cried; though his eyes
had
been shifty.

Once below, with Aspinall and Andrews, Lewrie's long-time Black Cox'n, to take charge of hats, swords, and such, Capt. Nicely shied a bit, peering about intently, though managing to hide most of his nervousness deuced well.

“It, ahh…you've re-painted lately, have ye, Lewrie?”

“Nossir, not in some time, why?” Lewrie said as he did honours with the first ready-opened and breathing bottle with his own hands.

“It smells…fresher than I recall,” Nicely tentatively allowed, accepting a semi-conical, low-stemmed, and footed glass from him.

“Oh, the cats, d'ye mean, sir,” Lewrie replied with a well-hid simper. “Don't know quite
what
got into ‘em, when you were aboard. A tribe that don't brook ‘change' all that well, I've discovered. A new person where their master usually is…pining for me, as well, sir? My apologies, again, for what harm they did your things.”

Far aft in the bed-space, Lewrie could espy two pairs of ears, two sets of hard-slit and wary eyes, perhaps even two noses, one with pink nostrils, the other grey, lurking over the top of his extra pillow and the folded-up coverlet, in
his wide-enough-for-two hanging bed. Where, he fervently hoped at that moment, they would be content to stay…muttering only the
faintest
spiteful “Mrrrs,” scheming nothing.

“Delightful creatures,” Nicely intoned without even attempting to sound convincing.

“And didn't they take to you, just, sir!” Lewrie couldn't help saying as he led Nicely to the dining-coach and a seat at the table.

“Ummm…yayss,” Nicely rejoined, “and aren't you so fortunate?”

High summer in Jamaica, even with wind scoops erected at every hatchway, the awnings rigged tautly over the quarterdeck against direct sunlight, and all the transom or coach-top windows of the great-cabins opened, mitigated against a heavy repast. They'd begun with a thin but spicy chicken broth, which was followed by freshly-caught red snapper with lemon and clarified butter sauce, and boiled carrots. Green salad with shredded bacon and oil-and-vinegar cleansed the palate for a main course of de-boned pork chops served with fried potato wedges and middling dollops of mushy peas, which repast required the opening of some hock with the fish, soup, and salad, and a second bottle of claret with the chops.

Not a single word was said about their coming mission far to the South'rd, of French and Spanish foes sheltered at Aruba or Curaçao, at Caracas or Cartagena, nor what dangers lurked in the port of Cayenne, or the marshy inlets of French Giuana, and Lewrie
had
begun to squirm a bit, waiting for a particularly ugly, but “inspired,” shoe to drop.

It was expected, of course, that naval officers never discussed Politics, Religion, Women, or “Work” in the mess, so…perhaps
after?