Hostile Shores (9 page)

Up the table, Commodore Grierson gave him an exasperated squint.

“And did the gallant Admiral really put his telescope to his bad eye, Sir Alan?” a younger woman asked.

“I was not aboard his ship to witness it, ma’am, but I’m sure he did, just as all of us were aghast to see Sir Hyde Parker’s signal to ‘Discontinue The Action’, when we were winning,” Lewrie assured her. “We with Commodore Riou had finally forced
our
assigned opponents to strike, and were engaged with the Trekroner Forts. One could look astern to see that we were already victorious.”

As for that rumoured French fleet under Villeneuve that sailed for the West Indies, Lewrie could put them at ease. “I got a letter from my youngest son, Hugh, who is serving aboard a seventy-four under Admiral Nelson, informing me that Nelson and the entire Mediterranean Fleet were setting off in pursuit. Long before the French may achieve any mischief, they will be hotly engaged and utterly defeated, and the Corsican Ogre, Boney, will have lost most of his navy!”

That raised a hearty cheer, and a toast to Nelson, followed by one to the Royal Navy, followed by one waggish proposal for Napoleon to be hanged at Tyburn, and his tiny body hung in a bird cage on London Bridge!

“He’s not all
that
tiny,” Lewrie japed. “It might take a larger cage … much like the ones used to hang pirates on display.”

Wonder of wonders, Lewrie had met Bonaparte, face-to-face?

Up-table, Commodore Grierson heaved a silent “Oh, for Christ’s sake!”

“The first time, I was his prisoner, temporarily.” Lewrie was more than happy to relate how Bonaparte, then a mere general of artillery, had blown up his mortar vessel east of Toulon, and had ridden down to the beach where the survivors had staggered ashore.

“Didn’t make a bold picture,” Lewrie chortled, “breeches drainin’ water and my stockings round my ankles. He came to gloat and call for my parole. I told him I couldn’t, for half the crew and gunners were Spanish or French Royalists. I swore the French were from the Channel Islands and really British, so they wouldn’t be butchered on the spot, or guillotined later, and I handed him my sword, a rather nice hanger gifted me years before. We’d have been marched off, but for the arrival of a squadron of ‘Yellow-Jacket’ Spanish cavalry, so I got rescued. He’s about four inches shorter than me, is Boney, a dandy fellow with clear skin … not the yellow or Arabic brown in the caricatures, with blue-ish eyes. The second time we met, in Paris during the Peace of Amiens, he’d put on a little weight, but…”

It did not take any arm-twisting for Lewrie to relate how he and his late wife, Caroline, had taken a second honeymoon to Paris to see the sights—
everyone
was doing it!—and of how he had taken several swords of dead French captains in hopes they could be returned to the families. It was a young, ambitious
chargé d’affaires
from the newly-reopened British Embassy who had managed to arrange an exchange of those swords for his old hanger, from Napoleon’s own hands in the Tuileries Palace.

“Didn’t go well, at
all,
” Lewrie laughed. “Bonaparte showed up in a general’s uniform and raved about why we hadn’t sent him an Ambassador yet, even if his was in London, why we hadn’t evacuated Malta like we promised, and that we had no business tellin’ him to get out of Holland and Switzerland, I don’t recall what all. To boot, Caroline and I were the only British there, and we got stared at and ogled like a pack o’ rabid wolves. Just after that, we got word from another English tourist that Bonaparte had sicced his secret police agents on us, and we’d best flee France instanter.”

He told them of fleeing in several sets of disguises, arranged by the other English couple, who had smuggled French aristocrats out to safety from prison or the guillotine, how they had almost gotten to a waiting rowboat on a remote beach near Calais.…

“There were cavalry and police on the bluff above,” Lewrie said more somberly. “We made a mad dash for the boat, but, just as I was hoisting Caroline in, she was shot. She passed away in the boat, not a minute later.”

That drew an aubible gasp and rumble of mutters. Even Grierson was wide-eyed. “Foul murder … Bonaparte a criminal, too … damn the French, root and branch … could be made out, here and there.

“Now, both my sons are in the Navy, Hugh was always to be, but his older brother, Sewallis, was so hot for revenge that I feared that he would enlist as a private soldier, or ship before the mast, did I deny him,” Lewrie sadly said. Truth was, Sewallis had
forged
his way to sea as a Midshipman! “My daughter lives with one of my brothers-in-law in a little village, Anglesgreen, in Surrey. Though my father has a small estate there, he’s mostly up to London and has little to offer towards a young girl’s raising. Too old, now, to tend to a young’un.”

No, Sir Hugo St. George Willoughby, damned near a charter member of the old Hell-Fire Club,
liked
young, so long as the girls were over eighteen, and obliging!

“So, when I received orders to
Reliant
in April of ’03, I was
more
than ready to sail against the French once more,” he concluded.

“A toast! A toast!” a youngish gallant cried, standing, and drawing others to their feet. “To the gallant Captain Lewrie, a man of grand adventures!”

Lewrie sat modestly with his hands in his lap to be honoured, bowing his head to left and right, admittedly with his ears burning.

*   *   *

Once the supper was over, the ladies excused themselves to the parlours for tea whilst the men gathered higher up the table for port, nuts, and sweet bisquits, and more talk of trade and the war. Lewrie excused himself after a while and went out on the front gallery for a breath of air, and to swab his face of perspiration; it had been nigh a steam bath inside, as he had feared, and the dance would be even worse. There were many supper guests who had the same idea, both men and women. Lewrie envied the fact that the women could cool themselves with their fans, something a gentleman could not.

“Your pahdon, sah, but, are you Captain Lewrie?” a liveried Black servant tentatively asked by his elbow.

“I am.”

“Dis note be fo’ ya, sah.”

Lewrie stepped closer to one of the entrance way lanthorns to peel it open and read it, and his face lit up with a feral smile.

My house. Come by midnight.

P

Can this evening be even more perfect?
he asked himself.

Inside, the musicians struck up the opening strains of formal airs for the minuet, and Lewrie steeled himself for the ordeal to come. He must squire as many ladies present as he could, from the wife of the Governor-General down to the youngest … with Mrs. Priscilla Frost in the queue, quite happily … without showing any favouritism. It could last for hours, right to the livelier
contre-dances.
He considered bowing out of those after an essay or two; there must be
some
shreds of dignity that a Post-Captain in the Royal Navy should show! Besides … the livelier dances would continue beyond midnight.

And he now had someplace else more desirable to go!

CHAPTER EIGHT

“Thank God you’re back aboard, sir,” Lt. Geoffrey Westcott said in some urgency once Lewrie had taken the welcoming salute, a quarter-hour past the beginning of the Forenoon at 8
A.M.

“Has a
real
French squadron turned up, then, Mister Westcott?” Lewrie asked, with a brow up in puzzlement that a Commission Officer would be up and stirring, and in full uniform, when it was usually the Mids who stood Harbour Watch. He could not help stifling a yawn, for his night ashore with Priscilla Frost had proven to be a strenuous one.

“No sir, nothing like that,” Westcott told him in a confidential mutter.

“Good, for at this moment, a hot kiss or a cold breakfast would most-like put me in my grave … and I’ve had both,” Lewrie said with a wry and semi-boastful chuckle.

“It is Commodore Grierson, sir,” Westcott went on, drawing from Lewrie a groan of disgust. “
Athenian
has been flying our number and ‘Captain Repair On Board’ since half past Seven. I sent a Mid over to explain that you spent the night ashore, and despatched the rest of them to hunt you down, but—”

“Didn’t know I
was
spendin’ the night ashore, ’til after the supper,” Lewrie explained, giving Grierson’s flagship a bleak glance. “And, ’tis best that you didn’t know my, uhm … lodgings. The last thing the lady in question needs would be some younker bangin’ on her doors and raisin’ her neighbours’ int’rest in the early hours.

“Nothin’ for it, then,” Lewrie decided, hitching his shoulders. “Desmond? Back to the boat. I’m summoned to the flag. Carry on, Mister Westcott.”

“Aye aye, sir.” Westcott said, doffing his hat.

His Cox’n, Liam Desmond; stroke-oar Patrick Furfy; and the hands of his boat crew had barely secured the cutter below the entry-port, and had just gained the deck, before they had to turn right round and descend again without a “wet” at the scuttle-butts, or a chance to go below for a lazy “caulk” with the off-watch hands in their hammocks.

What the Devil does Grierson want o’ me
this
early in the morning?
Lewrie wondered as he settled himself aft in the boat once more;
Whatever it is, I except I won’t enjoy it!

*   *   *

Commodore Grierson stodd behind his expensive desk in the day-cabin as Lewrie entered, ducking under the overhead beams as he made his way aft to stand before the desk.

“You slept out of your ship, Captain Lewrie?” Grierson began in a frosty tone, as if doing so was a violation of some regulation.

“Aye, I did, sir,” Lewrie replied. “To my recall, ’tis only Channel Fleet that requires Captains to sleep aboard, pending an appearance of a French fleet in the middle of the night. At least, that was the case when I was attached to Channel Fleet. Were you thinking of establishing such a rule, might I ask, sir?”

“No, I was
not,
” Grierson snapped, furrowing his brows to even deeper wrinkles, as if Lewrie’s attempt at “early morning cheery” was putting him off course. “At least your doing so results in your showing up in more suitable uniform, what?”

“Soon changed, as soon as I’m back aboard my ship, sir,” Lewrie easily confessed, looking toward an empty chair before the desk as if to prompt Grierson to proper hospitality. Commodore Grierson took no notice of his hint; his eyes were fixed on Lewrie’s chest, on the two medals he still wore (the one round his neck admittedly askew!) and on the star and sash of the Order of The Bath.

Damn my eyes, is he
jealous
?
Lewrie was forced to wonder.

“And you enjoyed the supper and ball immensely, I should not wonder,” Grierson went on, raising his glare to Lewrie’s face, again.

“Oh, quite, sir!” Lewrie said with a laugh. “How do the papers in London put it … ‘a good time was had by all’?”

“
Hhmmph
!” Grierson sneered. “I found the Society of Antigua and the nearby islands crude and dreary, but that of Nassau!… How have you
stood
such a pack of ‘Country-Puts’ and
tradesmen
but a cut above privateers?”

“I haven’t really spent that much time in port t’deal with ’em, sir,” Lewrie told him. He doubted if Grierson’s complaint was a stab at finding some mutual understanding; the man was just grousing to be grousing!

“They are insulting beyond belief,” Grierson went on with his plaint, pacing behind his desk and peering down his nose at the odd corners of his cabins. “One woman even had the nerve to take me to task for the manner of my arrival, sir!”

That’d be Priscilla, most-like,
Lewrie happily thought.

“Quite fetching a mort, but for that,” Grierson growled. “The
nerve
of the bitch! I
saw
you with her, Lewrie. Did you put her up to it? That Mistress Frost baggage?”

“I most certainly did not, sir,” Lewrie vowed.

Aye, I did, did you like it?
he thought, his face stony;
And is
that
why ye summoned me, ye petty bastard?

“She did tell me, though, sir,” Lewrie explained, “that there were many locals who were frightened out of their wits ’til they learned the true identity of your ships. Recall, I did warn you that your idea of a jest might turn round and bite you.”

Did he expect ’em t’be so relieved they’d cheer him and chair him through the streets?
Lewrie asked himself;
What an ass!

“As I was rowed past your frigate, Captain Lewrie, I noted that she is rather heavily weeded,” Commodore Grierson snapped, changing the subject as he whipped round to glare at Lewrie once more. “I saw more green slime than I did coppering or white lead, and I expect you also have so many barnacles that you could not
find
her coppering. How long has it been since your ship was docked and cleaned, sir?”

“Well, since she was taken out of Ordinary in April of 1803, I don’t believe we’ve had time for such, sir,” Lewrie informed him. “We spent much of that year in the West Indies and the Gulf of Mexico, then back to England as escort to a sugar trade, half of 1804 in the Channel, then right back here via Bermuda, since January.”

“Then you are more than due,” Commodore Grierson said with a satisfied nod of his head, though he didn’t even try to plaster on a gladsome smile. “Since I now have three frigates and two more brig-sloops on station, your frigate is redundant to my needs. And, as you say, it is doubtful that the French Admiral, Villeneuve, has designs upon the Bahamas. Those, plus the vessels already assigned here will more than suffice. As slow as your ship is reduced, she would be a hindrance to me.”

And … and what?
Lewrie wondered, waiting for the other shoe to drop as Grierson took his time to walk back to his desk, sit down behind it, and leaf through some correspondence.

“I will send you orders, releasing you from my squadron, sir,” Grierson at last said when he folded the correspondence away, folding his hands atop the desk.