The French Admiral (7 page)

Then, no matter what career was open to him after getting out of the Navy—which had treated him so abominably—he could brag for the rest of his life that he had, by God, been there! Sword in hand, making every shot count, eye-to-eye with the Frogs, pistoling
mounseers
right and left, or whatever else his imagination could do to enliven an observer's role as the tale grew with the telling.

I'll probably bore some people to tears with it. He laughed. There I was, hanging upside down from the clew garnets, four third-rates on either beam! Harro for England and St. George and pass the bloody port if you're through with it! And the best part of it all is, I'll be safe as bloody houses for a change, instead of scared fartless.

Unwinding his limbs from his precarious perch, Alan clambered down to the starboard bulwarks along the gang-way and jumped the last few feet to move back aft to the quarterdeck, where Treghues, Railsford, and Monk were plying their own telescopes to survey the immense power spread before them.

“Still fourteen of the line, sir,” Alan said to Railsford.

“Be more than that when we reach New York.” Railsford grinned at him. “Admiral Graves can add at least seven more, plus frigates. We shall have this Count de Grasse on a plate, mark my words.”

“Mister Railsford, signal the flag there was no sign of the French at Charlestown.”

“Mister Forrester!” Railsford bellowed.

“Sir?” Forrester called, running from the taffrail flag lockers.

“Signal ‘negative contact.' Make sure
Princessa
or one of the repeating frigates replies with a matching signal.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

The signal system, even with special contingencies included by Admiral Rodney before he departed the Indies, was meager almost to the point of muteness. Many signals were guns fired either to windward or leeward, ensigns hoisted from various masts, perhaps a certain colored fusee burning after dark. There were only so many signal flags, and each had a meaning mostly laid down in the Fighting Instructions, so anything that did not do with bloody battle took some ingenuity to convey. Usually it resulted in such confusion that ships sidled down to speak to each other at close range anyway, and captains developed their lungs by shouting and bawling at each other through speaking trumpets, making their choler permanent.

Today was no exception. A red ensign hoisted from the windward foremast, and a blue signal flag at the gaff of the spanker was not understood as ‘negative contact'; negative something, maybe, but what? The nearest frigate, the
Nymphe,
hoisted another flag that stood for “interrogative.”
Nymphe
then lowered the interrogative and raised another which ordered
Desperate
to close with her. Since
Nymphe
was commanded by a post-captain and
Desperate,
as a sixth-rate, boasted only a commander, they had to yield their advantage to windward and come down to her, which would result in a long hard beat back to their assigned position once the message had been passed and understood.

“Play with your fancies: and in them behold upon the hempen tackle ship-boys climbing; hear the shrill whistle which doth order give to sounds confused,” Mr. Dorne, their nattily attired surgeon, was emoting as roundly as Garrick in Drury Lane. “Behold the threaden sails, home with the invisible and creeping wind, draw the huge bottoms through the furrowed sea, breasting the lofty surge!”

Oh Christ, he must have aired his wig again, Alan thought.

“Henry the Fifth!”
Railsford barked with glee. “Quite appropriate!”

“Oh, do but think you stand upon the rivage and behold a city on th' inconstant billows dancing; for so appears this fleet majestical, holding due course for Harfleur.” Dorne ran on, now striking an oratorical pose, to the amusement of the assembled officers. Even cherubic Lieutenant Peck of the marines was smiling as though in fond memory, but being a marine, Alan was not sure that grin had anything to do with Shakespeare. Probably thinking on the last orange-vending wench he fondled in a theatre.

“Sounds most powerful like it, indeed sir,” Monk agreed.

“Now you tell me, Captain, that the Bard did not do some time in the sea service,” Dorne crowed.

“Follow, follow, grapple your minds . . .” Treghues began with some enthusiasm, but then stumbled and groped, not so much to remember the verse as to wander off the subject entirely, as though something else had caught his attention. He raised his telescope to look at
Nymphe
once more.

“Follow, follow, grapple your minds to sternage of this navy,” Forrester recited, unable to resist the temptation to toady with his betters or show off his excellent education. “And leave your England as dead midnight still, guarded with grandsires, babies and old women, either past or not arrived to pith and puissance, for who is he whose chin is but enriched with one appearing hair that will not follow these culled and choice-drawn cavaliers to France?”

“Hah, hah, young sir, a scholard lurks!” Dorne shook with pleasure. “You are most familiar with him, I grant you.”

“Aye, sir.” Forrester beamed, trying to put on an air of modesty. “Especially
Henry the Fifth,
and that passage, which deals with the Navy.”

“And when do
you
get enriched with that one appearing hair, Forrester?” Carey asked, with all the carrot-headed innocence that only the youngest midshipman could get away with.

“You would do well to grapple your mind to your duties and making something of yourself, young sir,” Treghues said, shutting off their open enjoyment of Carey's dig. “Better indeed to emulate Forrester than be japing and frivolous! Or you shall never live long enough to grow that one appearing hair in my ship.”

Poor Carey flinched as though he had been slapped in the mouth, and his eyes welled up in an instant. “I am sorry, sir,” he quavered, on the edge of losing all control. Carey spun away and almost ran to leeward to be as alone as a completely humiliated and hurt thirteen-year-old boy can be on a ship.

Had discipline allowed, the assembled officers and warrants might have given an orchestrated chorus of groans at the harshness with which Treghues had chastised Carey for such a harmless remark. Even Treghues realized that he had gone a little too far, for he barked at them to be about their business and not stand about like cod's-heads.

Poor little get, Alan thought. Still, it's better him than me for a change, and he has been getting away with a lot lately.

“Don't stand there making gooseberry eyes at me, Lewrie,” Treghues blustered. Alan realized he had raised his eyebrows in surprise at Carey's humiliation and Treghues considered it a reproof. “I doubt you know any Shakespeare at all, do you?”

“A little, sir,” Alan replied, trying desperately to remember some.

“Let's hear it.”

“Um, uh . . .”

“As I thought,” Treghues said primly. “By the heavens, you're a rogering buck with no wit at all, aren't you? What was the last book you read? The guide to Covent Garden women? That Cleland trash?”

The last interesting one, yes, Alan had to admit, if only to himself. “A book, well, a chapbook really, about naval battles, sir.”

“Who wrote it?”

“A man named Clerk, sir. A Scot. Avery's father sent it.”

“A Navy officer?” Treghues asked sharply.

“No, I don't think so, sir, but it was a most interesting—”

“And I suppose you think that makes you equal to an admiral now, does it, just like this store clerk?”

“His
name
is Clerk, sir—”

“Fictional trash,” Treghues sneered. “Bend your mind to your duties, sir! Take to heart what you read in the Bible this morning. Scotsmen, of all things!”

Since the morning's lesson had been from Genesis, there wasn't much that Alan could take to heart, unless he wished to re-create the human race, and he had already had a fair head start on that issue. Thankfully, Treghues turned away to more interesting things, allowing Alan to escape with a whole skin and to take refuge in what duties he could find.

He did not consider himself such a
great
sinner, not after all the examples in his life for comparison, so it was hard to reject the wave of self-pity that confronted him. When he had joined
Desperate,
even after a fatal duel for Lucy Beauman's honor, Treghues had not been so badly disposed toward him, not until that French gunner had smacked him with a rammer. There had been a time when Treghues had treated him fairly, decently, had thought him a ‘comer.' To recognize that Treghues treated everyone oddly now was little consolation.

“Mister Lewrie,” Railsford called from aft.

“Aye, sir?”

“Mister Cheatham requests your assistance with the ship's books in the holds. Do you attend him?”

“Aye, sir, directly,” Alan answered in relief.

Once below with their youngish purser in the bread room, Alan could relax a little, though he was sure that Cheatham had good reasons to despise him after his and Avery's escapade. But Cheatham put him at ease almost at once.

“The Jack in the bread room is aft in the rum stores at present, Mister Lewrie,” Cheatham said. “We shall be opening a new cask of salt meat for noon issue, and I need someone to attest as to its fitness.”

“Aye, sir.”

“Care for some beer?” Cheatham asked, waving a hand lazily at the keg in the corner.

“Beg pardon, Mister Cheatham, but Captain Treghues has me on water and ship's rations for the next ten days,” Alan told him, licking his lips all the same. “After yesterday, I would not like to get either one of us in more trouble.”

“Devil take it, Lewrie. Take a stoup,” he commanded, which order Alan was only too happy to obey. He took down a wooden mug and poured himself a pint.

“Confusion to our foes, sir,” Alan said, before taking his first sip.

“Hear, hear!” Cheatham acknowledged, tapping a pint for himself as well. “Now, Mister Lewrie, while we have some privacy, just what have you done that would turn the captain against you so badly?”

“I . . . I would rather that remain private, Mister Cheatham, sir,” Alan said, wondering if he had to stand on the quarter-deck nettings and tell the whole world before they were satisfied. “It is not so much what I have done, but what has happened to Commander Treghues.”

“I will allow that he has not been himself for the last month or so,” Cheatham said, frowning between quaffs of beer. “There is a question as to whether he is in full possession of his faculties.”

“Mister Cheatham, were we ashore in peacetime, Treghues would be confined to Bedlam, playing with his own spit.” Alan grinned.

“No matter,” Cheatham said. “He is our master and commander, appointed over us by the Crown, and that is disloyal talk. Whether it is true or not,” he concluded, ignoring his own remark, which could be taken for the same sort of dis-loyalty. “All of us . . . Mister Railsford, Peck, the sailing master, Mister Dorne . . . look you, Lewrie, you're a good sailor and you're shaping well as a sea-officer. Before the captain's . . . misfortune . . . he thought well of you. It is without credence that he could turn on you so quickly without reason. You have friends in this ship, Lewrie, and we might be able to advert your good qualities to set aside whatever the captain has formed as to his opinion of you.”

“David Avery did not speak to you, did he, sir?”

“Not recently, though he had expressed concern earlier,” Cheatham said, closing the bread room door for more privacy and retaking a seat on a crate. “Perhaps I could be of some aid to you.”

“On your word of honor that it goes no further, sir,” Alan begged.

“I must discuss it with Mister Railsford, for one, but you may be assured of my discretion. My word on it,” Cheatham assured him.

“I was accused of rape, sir,” Alan began, feeling he had no one else to trust. He outlined how his father had snared him with his half-sister Belinda, how he had been forced to sign away any hopes of inheritance from either side of the family, and to take banishment into the Navy.

“And you have no clue about your mother's side of the family, the Lewries?” Cheatham asked after hearing the tale.

“None, sir, save my mother's name . . . Elizabeth. They said her parents are still alive, but God knows where, or whether that's really true.”

“Sounds like a West country name,” Cheatham surmised. “I seem to have heard the name Lewrie before in some connection, but it does not have any significance at present. Tell me about her.”

“She was supposed to have bedded my father before he went off to Gibraltar in the last war, where he won his knighthood, but he left her with nothing,” Alan said. “He always told me she was whoring before he came back and had died on the parish's expense. He found me in the poor house at St. Martin's in the Fields and took me in, and signed the rolls to claim me. I don't even know what she looked like.”