The Invasion Year (25 page)

“I am, sir, Sir Harper Strachan, Baron Ludlow, and equerry to the Court of Saint James’s, and His Majesty, King George the Third,” the visitor said as he made a particularly showy “leg” with a flourish of his hat cross his breast.

How’s he keep the wig on?
Lewrie wondered;
Glue?

“Bugger that! Show us yer
tits
!” a sailor cried over the mild din of music and chatter.

“Oh,” was all Lewrie could say in response, and whipped off his own hat to make a bow in kind. “Welcome aboard
Reliant,
milord. Your servant.”

“I have just spoken with Captain Blanding, sir,” Strachan went on, once he’d plopped his hat back on his wig and straightened back up, “to arrange with him his presentation at Court for his investiture in the Order of the Bath, and his baronetcy. The Crown would find it convenient did
you
be available to present yourself at the same time, sir.”

“Oh, that,” Lewrie gawped, for it had completely flown his ken, the last few months or so, and he had never really considered a knighthood earned. “I’d almost forgotten.”

“Oh …
that,
sir? Slipped your
mind,
did it, sir?” Sir Harper bristled, his turkey-wattle jowls quivering, and his drink-veined cheeks reddening. “You hold a
knighthood
to be of so
little
moment, sir?”

“Meanin’ that it was so long ago that Captain Blanding and I were informed of the honour, and we’ve been so busy of late, convoyin’ a West Indies trade the last two months,” Lewrie managed to babble in quick explanation. “Think of the expression ‘herdin’ cats,’ sir, and that’ll give ye the best impression of it. Back o’ the mind, that?” he said with a helpless shrug. “Might I offer you some refreshment in my cabins, sir, and—”

“Do your quarters reek
less
than your ship, Captain Lewrie … which I
must
say you keep in a slovenly, nigh
mutinous
manner?” their haughty caller enquired, producing a large paisley silk handkerchief from a side pocket of his coat and pressing it to his nose.

“We’re Out of Discipline, sir.” Lewrie goggled at him. “Can’t allow the people shore liberty, or they’d take ‘leg bail’ and run off, so
this
is their liberty … short as it’ll be. As for the smells … all ships stink, sir … milord … even though we re-paint, scrub and scour with vinegar, smoke her with tobacco torches…,” he explained, heaving another shrug. “After a time, though … stink happens.”

“Hmpf!” was Sir Harper Strachan’s comment on
that,
looking about with amazement and outrage to see half-gowned women dancing with tars in the waist; the nanny goat half up on a gun carriage to get at one of the bread bags full of bisquit hung underneath the larboard gangway, and the assorted livestock in the forecastle manger. Even the musicians and the lusty songs seemed to irk him.

It didn’t help that Lewrie’s cats took that moment to arrive on the quarterdeck. Chalky, the younger and spryer white’un, patted at Lewrie’s breeches for attention, then sprang aloft and scaled his leg and waist-coat, to perch teetering on his right shoulder, just as Sir Harper returned his gaze to Lewrie. His mouth plopped open.

“This is Chalky, milord,” Lewrie lamely told him as Chalky put his cheek against Lewrie’s to nuzzle and play-nip. “Came off a French brig in the West Indies in ’98. Nice puss,” Lewrie said as he half-turned his head towards the cat.

Feeling ignored, Toulon wandered up to paw at Lewrie’s leg, too, mewing most plaintively. The Crown equerry stiffened in even greater distaste.

This is
not
goin’ well,
Lewrie told himself.

“That’s Toulon, milord. Evacuated with me when he was a kitten in ’94, so he’s of an age by now,” Lewrie further explained.

Toulon looked Sir Harper over, and ambled over to see if he’d be more amenable to “wubbies.”

“You were sayin’, milord … something about a convenient date?” Lewrie prompted as Toulon began to sniff at Sir Harper’s ankles.

“Ah, yayss,” Strachan drawled, “Captain Blanding has promised to make himself available for the weekly levee, next Tuesday, which will begin at ten of the … damme!” he yelped as Toulon laid a tentative paw on his silk stockings. “Get your creature away from me!”

“Here, Toulon … here, lad,” Lewrie bade, clucking and snapping his fingers. “This coming Tuesday, milord?”

“Yes, this Tuesday next,” Strachan snapped, shuffling away from Toulon, gently shoving with a dainty slipper to shoo him off. “At ten in the morning. In full uniform, and Court dress.”

“Uniform
and
Court dress, sir? There’s a diff’rence?” Lewrie asked. He was beginning to enjoy rankling the top-lofty shit.

“You will have lodgings in London, Captain Lewrie?” Strachan said. “A letter with the particulars could await you.”

“The Madeira Club, milord … at the corner of Duke and Wigmore Streets. Might I bring someone along with me as a guest?”

“Hoy, Cap’m Lewrie! These look familiar?” Nancy took that unfortunate moment to open her bodice and shake her impressive poonts in his direction, to the cheers of his sailors as they hustled her below.

“
Not
one of your…!” Sir Harper began, aghast.

“Cats, sir?” Lewrie supplied.

“
Whores,
I meant to say, such as that … that…!”

“Merely an old acquaintance and ally, sir,” Lewrie told him, wincing and wondering how much worse it could get.

“I
dare
say,” Strachan sneered with another disdainful sniff.

“There’s my father, sir, Major-General Sir Hugo Saint George Willoughby, retired,” Lewrie said, “who resides in London. At such short notice, I rather doubt one of my brothers-in-law and his wife could attend, but if he could get away from his regiment in time…”

Lewrie would
not
invite his other brother-in-law, Governour Chiswick, not
this
side of Hell, anyway, even if he and his wife, Millicent, could bring his daughter, Charlotte, from Anglesgreen in a day. She was too young to appreciate it. He didn’t need his disreputable old school chums, like Clotworthy Chute—who’d most-like fleece a naive peer of his year’s rents, or grope up a lady-in-waiting—or even Peter Rushton, now Viscount Draywick, who sat in Lords and got drunk and diddled regularly and was prone to giggle at the most inappropriate moments. Both his sons were at sea, more’s the pity.…

“The levee will include a great many who are to be ennobled or knighted, and will be bringing guests of their own, so it would be best did you limit your own … Sir Hugo Saint George
Willoughby,
did you say, sir?” Strachan looked as stunned as if he’d just been pole-axed at the knacker’s yard, so stunned that he did not notice Toulon standing up to paw at his silk breeches. “Him?” Stachan goggled.

Damme, but my father
does
get that reception whenever his name’s mentioned,
Lewrie thought with a wry smirk;
He’s
heard
of him, has he?

Strachan, Lord Ludlow, gave Lewrie another of his disdainful up-and-down looks, as if to say that the acorn didn’t fall far from the tree, and was the Crown aware of what a bad bargain they would be making by knighting the son of
that
rake-hell?

“The formal notice, and the requirements in our dress, shall be waiting at your lodgings at the Madeira Club, when you arrive in London, Captain Lewrie,” Strachan intoned; hard to understand, though, with his handkerchief to his nose and mouth. “I would advise you come up to the city early enough to consult a tailor for the necessary items?”

“Thankee for the kind suggestion, milord.”

“Good day to you, Captain Lewrie,” Strachan said, performing a graceful and languid “leg” in
congé,
sweeping off his hat again. That was too much temptation to Toulon, who, though “of an age,” still liked to play with strange things, and the egret feathers were simply too tempting, so he pounced at the perigee of the sweep. “Damn my eyes!”

“Good day to you, milord,” Lewrie said, making a “leg,” too, so he could hide his grin and stifle his laughter.

He’d quite forgotten Chalky, still teetering like a wren on a grass stem on his shoulder. With a petulant yowl, Chalky leaped for the deck … and found the hat and feathers intriguing, too.

“Side-party … departing honours,” Lewrie snapped.

“Gaah, you hellish damned…!” Strachan snarled as he put his hat back on his head, now minus an egret plume that Chalky had tugged loose and scampered away with, closely followed by Toulon, who wanted a bat at it, too.

Baron Ludlow, Sir Harper Strachan, glared hot-blooded murder at Lewrie, his shallow chest heaving in anger, before turning away for the starboard entry-port, whilst the bosun’s call trilled and trilled. He could not quite fathom how to leave, though, peering over to determine that the boarding battens were much too steep and shallow for a down-the-house-stairs descent. Strachan tucked his walking-stick, mace of honour, or whatever it was under his left armpit, at last, while Bosun Sprague went into his third repeat of a call, shuffled about to face in-board, and groped blindly with one foot for the first batten with his hands gripping the inner face of the bulwarks.

“We
could
prepare a bosun’s chair, sir, if you—”

“Garr!” was Strachan’s comment as he managed to get both feet on the top batten, and shifted his right hand to the after-most main-mast stay.

“Oh, mind the tar, sir, we—!” Lewrie cautioned.

“Gaah!” Strachan re-iterated as the fresh tar got daubed on his fingers, before he re-discovered the man-ropes. It took him at least a very long minute before his hat was below the lip of the entry-port, and Bosun Sprague could take his call from his mouth and catch a deep breath.

“Did he make it into his boat, Mister Grainger?” Lewrie asked. “I’m afraid to look.”

“Ehm … he did, just now, sir,” Grainger reported, after a peek over the side.

“Poor
lubber
!” Midshipman Rossyngton whispered gleefully. “My
grandmother
isn’t that clumsy!”

“Well now, Mister Sprague,” Lewrie said, turning to the Bosun, “and wasn’t
that
bloody disastrous? Congratulations on your lungpower, by the way.”

“Thankee, Captain,” Sprague replied, still looking a tad blown. “I gave him an admiral’s salute … four times over, sir. The feller didn’t get to the boat soon, I’d’ve trotted out the one to the King.”

Lewrie went back to the cross-deck stanchions and hammock nettings at the fore end of the quarterdeck, where Toulon and Chalky were footballing their prize and play-pouncing on the feather. They looked up at him … seemingly very pleased with themselves.

“That’s alright, catlin’s … I still love you, despite that,” he told them.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Even with the great improvements in the nation’s road network, the prevalence of huge post-coaches and regular service, the growth of the canal system, and passenger barges, very few subjects of England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland ever travelled much more than twenty miles from their home towns. It took money, and leisure time, for people to travel, so … though many wistfully hoped to see London one day, the number who did was but a fraction of the population of Great Britain.

Those who resided in London who ever traipsed west to the parks and The Mall, and the grandeur of the West End round St. James’s Palace, would represent about the same small fraction, for most folk lived and worked, ran their shops and such, in familiar neighbourhoods where they felt comfortable, perhaps even safe, and might never stray more than two miles from them, whether the neighbourhood was what was coming to be termed “respectable,” run-down and seedy but close to their employments, or a maze-like criminal stew.

The number of people of Great Britain who ever
entered
the Palace of St. James was an even smaller fraction. This cool but sunny morning, Alan Lewrie was one of them, for the first time in his life, and (most-likely) the last, he reckoned.

He had come up from Sheerness as an idle passenger aboard one of the larger brig-rigged packets; ashore by gig to board her, cross the Medway and the Nore to the mouth of the Thames, and up-river to the city. He and Pettus travelled together, for he needed a “man” to see to his things. Captain Blanding took a larger entourage, including his cabin steward and personal servant; all depended on the packet’s cook for their meals, which were quite toothsome since fresh food and fresh fish were available … as were lashings of drink.