The King's Marauder (6 page)

One half-day, every
other
day,
Lewrie told himself;
I swear I can smell
that
stink, too, and I don’t want it on me!

There was an older Post-Captain in a frayed and worn uniform, with ecru woolen stockings instead of white silk or cotton, who suddenly began to cough as if he would hock up half a lung. The old fellow plucked a handkerchief from a side pocket of his coat and put it over his mouth as he began to gargle phlegm and wheeze for his breath.

Perhaps a half a day, once a
week
!
Lewrie amended to himself as officers to either side of the old fellow began to lean away, or head for the courtyard tea cart or the “jakes” as the liquid-sounding hacking went on and on, and the old Post-Captain went red in the face.

“Perhaps, sir…” a Lieutenant nearby suggested, helping him to his feet to steer him outside for fresher, clearer air.

“That don’t sound good,” a Commander with his single epaulet on his left shoulder muttered to the officers hear him. “Consumption, or Pleurosy, most-like. Anybody know him?”

“Lots of Consumption ’board my last ship,” a Lieutenant commented with a wry expression. “Winters in the North Sea, and all our hands cooped up below, with no ventilation, our Surgeon said did it. I’d put my money on Pleurosy, though. The poor fellow don’t look as if he’s been at sea in ages.”

“A bad winter in a boardinghouse, aye,” the Commander agreed.

Lewrie went back to his magazine, but, after another hour or so, he had to abandon his seat for a trip to the “necessary”, then went out to the courtyard for hot tea, picking up his hat and boat cloak on the way. He pulled out his pocket watch as he stood in the queue, finding that it was nigh eleven in the morning.

An hour more, and I’m un-moorin’,
he told himself as he turned to idly look about the courtyard.

“Good Lord, sir … Captain Lewrie?” someone called out.

“Hey? Mister Westcott? Well, just damn my eyes!” Lewrie cried in response as he spotted his former First Officer from HMS
Reliant,
and broke out in a broad grin, leaving the queue to go shake hands. “What the Devil are you doin’ here, Geoffrey? I thought you were t’go aboard a new frigate.”

“Bad luck, that, sir,” Lieutenant Westcott said with a rueful expression. “’Twas to be the
Weymouth
frigate, a thirty-two, coming in to pay off and refit, from Halifax. Onliest trouble was, she never turned up. After loafing about for two months, Admiralty decided she had foundered somewhere in the North Atlantic and gone down with all hands, without a trace. The hands we’d gathered went off to the receiving ships, and the rest of us were left to twiddle our thumbs.”

“After I wrote Admiralty reccommending you?” Lewrie said with a dis-believing scowl. “I told ’em you’d be best employed commandin’ a ship of your own, even advance ye to Commander.”

“And for that I’m heartily grateful, sir,” Westcott said, beaming one of his quick, tooth-baring grins that some people found fierce and off-putting, “but, it doesn’t seem to signify with the Navy so far.”

I wonder if that has anything t’do with our bein’ part o’ Home Popham’s idiotic invasion o’ Buenos Aires last year,
Lewrie considered;
Did we all get tarred with the same brush?

“Well, if it’s any comfort, I’ve been twiddlin’ my thumbs down at Anglesgreen all winter, myself,” Lewrie told him.

“Oh, you don’t . .!” Westcott said, looking him over. “Where’s your crutch, or cane?” he exclaimed with joy.

“No more need of either!” Lewrie boasted, even essaying a dance step or two to show off, causing them both to laugh, and explaining his winter regimen. “You’re goin’ in to announce yourself?” Lewrie asked. “I’m for tea, myself, then I’ll be right in.”

“No rush, in my case, sir,” Lt. Westcott said with a despondent shrug. “I’ll join you for tea. Christ, anything’s better than sitting in there all afternoon. I can sometimes conjure that the Waiting Room is the anteroom to Hades … and just as warm!”

They got their tea, with sugar and a dollop of cream that the vendor swore was “fresh-ish” that morning, and wandered a few feet off to sip and savour the warmth on their hands round their mugs.

“You’ve stayed nearby t’Whitehall, in London all winter?” Lewrie idly asked, fearing that Westcott was over-extended for funds.

“Cross the river in Southwark, sir,” Westcott said with another rueful shrug. “Number Nine, Mitre Road. It’s been all quite snug and comfortable, and quite reasonable, too. Some of our prize-money came due, from our fight off the Chandeleurs … in 1803, at
long
last, hah! And, my father sends me twenty-five pounds
per annum,
so the half-pay on top of all that has kept me well-fed and entertained.

“And, there’s the landlady,” Westcott smugly added, flashing a grin. “A rather delightful widow in her early thirties.”

“A snug berth … as it were, Geoffrey?” Lewrie posed with one brow up. For as long as they had served together, Lt. Westcott had been known as a man simply mad for “quim”, able to discover a willing wench in the middle of a jungle, or upon a desert island. He was, in point of fact, so libidinous that he put Lewrie in the shade!

In answer, Westcott only cocked his brows and beamed.

“And, dare I ask, sir, if you and Mistress Stangbourne are still on friendly terms?” Westcott went on, between sips of tea.

“A sore subject, Geoffrey,” Lewrie told him with a frown, and a wince. “‘Least said, soonest mended’, and all that.”

“Oh! I’m sorry, sir,” Westcott said, looking abashed.

“So am I,” Lewrie sadly agreed. “I’ll tell you of it, sometime. Here, now! How’d you like a fine supper with me at the Madeira Club, where I’m lodging? Dine you in, let you sample the best of its wine cellar, and put you up for the night?”

“Sounds delightful, sir!” Lt. Westcott perked up.

“Mind, the lodgers retire damned early, but, we could find some amusement after … the theatres, perhaps?” Lewrie suggested.

“I could give my man, Mumphrey, a night off,” Westcott happily mused. “You remember Mumphrey, sir? One of the wardroom servants from the
Reliant
frigate? Landsman who served a quarterdeck carronade?”

“Vaguely,” Lewrie replied, thinking that Geoffrey Westcott was better-off than he’d realised, if he could afford to pay a manservant to do for him, even on half-pay.

Both men swilled down the last slurps of their tea and returned the mugs to the cart vendor.

“Well, I must go in and do my weekly begging, sir,” Westcott said with a faint laugh.

“As do I,” Lewrie said, as well. “I’d only planned t’stay ’til mid-day, then go find dinner. D’ye intend to bide all day?”

“I had planned to, aye, sir, but all I really need to do is to announce my presence, remind the clerks where I lodge, and that I’m still available, so…” Westcott said, ending with a shrug.

“Aye, let’s sit and plead ’til noon, then find a good ordinary or chophouse,” Lewrie offered. “My treat. Damme, Mister Westcott … no matter our circumstances at present, it is damned good t’see you, again!”

They turned and walked to the doors together. The tiler looked up and began his spiel.

“H’its damned crowded in there, Lieutenant, an’ there’s a mob o’ others already waitin’, so, ’less ye’ve been sent for…” he rasped.

“Heard it! Heard it!” Westcott hooted back with a grin.

CHAPTER SIX

“Anything for me?” Lewrie asked the club servant behind the anteroom desk as he shrugged off his hat and boat cloak.

“Ehm … yes, sir,” the desk clerk perkily replied. “A letter from a solicitor, a Mister Mountjoy?”

“Excellent,” Lewrie said, breaking the wax seal and unfolding the note on his way to the Common Rooms for a warm-up in front of the fireplace. “Ah hah!”

Mr. Matthew Mountjoy, his long-time solicitor and prize agent, wrote to inform Lewrie that he had just received a tidy sum from Admiralty Prize-Court, and that he had deposited it all at Coutts’ Bank for him. Even with all four ships of Captain Blanding’s small squadron “in sight” when they had fought and taken the four French warships off the Chandeleur Islands off the mouth of the Mississippi and Spanish Louisiana, in 1803, cutting each British ship’s share to a fourth of the total sum, Lewrie’s traditional “two-eighths” was still an impressive sum, and it had been
Reliant
alone that had run down and taken the other 74-gun ship which had been sailing
en flute
as a trooper, so her value, less the value of the removed guns, was another welcome amount!

Five hundred pounds to Coutts’, and the rest into the Three Percents,
Lewrie determined, smiling in delight as he re-folded the letter and stuck it into a coat pocket. Tomorrow, he would call on Mountjoy, visit the bank, make the transfer to the Funds, then take out enough for a shopping trip. Once warmed, he summoned a club waiter and ordered a brandy. Some enterprising smuggler along the coast must have good connexions, for the club had obtained several ankers of French brandy.

The Three Percents, though; the thought of them brought the painful memory of his last conversation with Lydia Stangbourne’s brother, Percy, Viscount Stangbourne, at their vast house outside Reading.

“If Lydia is determined never to marry, Percy,” he had pleaded, “me, or anyone else, then she must be provided for. Perhaps you could set aside money in the Funds, in her name … some in a solid bank, too, so she’ll have independent means, the rest of her life.”

“Before I gamble it away, hey, Alan?” Percy had tried to tease, which effort had fallen flat. Percy’s new bride, Eudoxia Durschenko, had kerbed his penchant for gambling deep, fearing for the security of herself and her first child-to-be.

“Her two-thousand-pound dowry is her own, too,” Lewrie had stated.

“Christ!” he muttered, shaking his head, shaking off the memory, and brooded near the warm fire, slowly sipping his drink, putting off any thought of dressing in civilian clothes for the symphony that evening, or much of anything else.

*   *   *

Lewrie had written Lydia as soon as he had completed
Reliant
’s de-commissioning and had gone up to London to turn all the paperwork over to Admiralty, telling her of his possibly-crippling wound, and that he would go to Anglesgreen to heal up, if possible. Lydia had written back, promising to coach down, but he had asked her not to, in fear that seeing him in his current condition might make her think the less of him, and, once he had realised how
he
was received by his daughter and in-laws, allowing Lydia to face that same sort of reception was the last thing he’d wish for her.

Finally, round Christmas, he had given in to her continued invitations and had coached up to Reading for the holidays with what few suitable presents he had been able to purchase in the new shops in the town.

Foxbrush, the Stangbournes’ country estate, put any great house Lewrie had ever seen to shame. It was immense, a late-Palladian pile of three storeys, as long as a First Rate ship of the line and as deep, less the inset centre courtyard and carriage entry and broad steps to the front doors, as a frigate. It was spiked with over a dozen chimneys, all fuming in promise of warmth.

Flunkeys in blue-and-white Stangbourne livery had rushed down to Lewrie’s coach to fold down the metal steps, open the door, and hand him down, then gathered his dunnage from the coach’s boot.

The family descended the long flight of stairs more sedately, with Lydia in the lead, and Percy tending his pregnant wife, Eudoxia. Lurking astern of them was Eudoxia’s father, Arslan Artimovich Durschenko, the evil-looking one-eyed former lion tamer from Daniel Wigmore’s circus/menagerie/theatrical troupe, in which Eudoxia had once belonged as a trick shooter with muskets, pistols, and re-curved bow, and trick rider and
ingenue
actress. Her father wore his usual scowl of disappointment to A, clap eyes on Lewrie, and B, see that he was still alive! In his new role as Percy’s horse master and chief trainer to Viscount Stangbourne’s personally-raised cavalry regiment, the old bastard was looking particularly prosperous.

“Oh, God, you!” Lydia had cried, clinging to Lewrie, and almost sending him tumbling. “I am so glad you are finally, actually, here!”

“It’s been too damned long, aye!” Lewrie had breathed into her hair, leaned back to peer long and deep into her emerald-green eyes, then had given her another long and close embrace.

It had all
started
so jolly, at least.

There was his leg and his walking stick; there were those long and broad stone stairs, and once his set of rooms was ready, after a hot punch in the
small
salon (which was as big as his father’s grand ballroom!) there were the several flights and landings to the upper storey where he could un-pack, and rest before having to come back
down
for supper. That first meal, and the breakfast the next morning, had been just the intimate family circle. From there on, though, it was a constant round of holiday suppers, at Foxbrush, or at the houses of Stangbourne neighbours.

There were dances, in which he could not participate without going arse-over-tit. There were strolls about the property, shortened for his benefit, and morning or afternoon rides with Lewrie on an unfamiliar horse that was as spirited as his own, Anson, back home. And, there were steeplechases or cub hunts, in which he did not take a part at all, seeing them off from the bottom of those detested stone stairs, then returning to the interior of the great house to drink, read, and sulk whilst everyone else trotted off in a clatter to follow the hounds to gay “ta-ta-ras”.

Percy arranged shooting parties, even though he was a bit leery of
women
taking part, and it didn’t help that Eudoxia would insist on going along in her “condition”, then proving to be the most accurate of them all, with Lewrie second-best and Lydia sometimes out-shooting him.

The best of all was the late evenings after supper, when Lewrie could retire to his rooms, and, once the house was quiet with all but the scullery maids in the kitchens retired for the night, Lydia would make her stealthy way to his bed.