Dewey Lambdin - H.M.S. COCKEREL Страница 5

Even in the near dark Alan could see Caroline's face go empty and vacant, then vexed, then subsumed with worry, and after that she had no more thought for her husband than she might for the Man in the Moon. With frantic, matronly haste she did back up her robe and was out the door and down the hall for the nursery.

"Bloody…!" Alan Lewrie groaned in a soft whimper, head back on the pillows in sudden defeat, though still up on his elbows in welcome. "Bloody Hell!" he moaned, collapsing.

"Marrrh," William Pitt announced in a grumpy, closed-mouthed trill as he hopped up on the foot of the bed, as if he had known how the evening would fall out. He padded slowly up the covers, tacking cautiously around the slowly sinking seamount of his master's fading tumescence, and flopped himself sideways against Lewrie's upper chest, leaning his whole, and not inconsiderable, weight against him. Pitt's good eye regarded Lewrie with commiseration, his one undamaged ear gave a tiny twitch and he yawned again, as close to a grin as felines may essay, baring his remaining teeth and mismatched fangs. One heavy, round paw, big as an unhusked walnut, reached out and patted at Alan's chin, claws nicely sheathed, to give comfort. And to demand some for himself.

Lewrie slid an arm down from inside the warm, recently inviting covers to pet him and scratch the top of his head, the shaggy ruff of fur around his thick neck.

"You knew, didn't you, Pitt?" Lewrie whispered, resignedly. "I wish to God I knew how you do these things."

"Murpphh," William Pitt harrumphed, beginning to pun-loud and rattling, like a bilge-pump chain. He closed his eyes in bliss.

At least somebody 'round here's blissful, Lewrie thought. And most uncharitably, too.

Chapter 3

Breakfast was a rushed affair; strong cup of tea, leftover mutton chop and burned toast. The household was a veritable babble of activity, of sound, and Lewrie needed time away from it. That and the reek of soiled nappies. Charlotte was being her usual incontinent serf, Hugh had suffered a tiny "accident," no matter he was supposedly breeched and past such. Thankfully, it was the washday, and once Lewrie returned from his morning ride across the hills, the aromas of steam, boil-water, soap and starch, and hot irons would have conquered, for a time at least, the winter-pent aromas of sour milk, soiled swaddles and progeny poop.

He had one foot in the stirrup, crouched for the leap, when a voice interrupted him. It was Cony, calling his name, standing in the kitchen door, waving something at him.

"Bloody…" Alan sighed, hopping on one foot to clear his boot toe from the stirrup. "Now what?" he demanded of the frigid morning. It had not been a good evening. He had struggled to stay awake until Caroline might return from the nursery, but it had taken what seemed like hours until she had quieted little Charlotte enough to allow the governess to finish the ministrations. She had slipped back into bed with him, her skin cool against his toasty warmth, and had snuggled close, kissed him a time or two with a weary, acquiescent, wifely absence of passion, gently puffing her lips with her mouth ajar against his throat in utterly stupefied slumber not half a minute later.

And had risen to her great joys of domestic duties before Cony had fetched him his first cup of tea!

"Letter f r ya, sir," Cony told him as he tromped through the kitchen garden. "They's a messenger come with it, down from London. In th' kitchen, warmin' 'is backside f'r now, sir."

Lewrie turned the packet over and sucked in a cold breath of chill country air as he beheld the blue wax searing wafer, with the fouled anchor beneath the crown, admiralty.

"War wi' th' French, I wager, sir," Cony declared as Lewrie broke the seal. His man was all but hopping from one foot to the other in rising excitement. "Ever'one knowed h'it wuz a'comin'."

"Thought the old fart'd retired by now," Lewrie commented, as he noted the inscription below the message. A harried junior clerk had penned the bulk of it, but for the prim signature of the first secretary Philip Stephens at the bottom. He'd been first secretary to the Admiralty since the year Lewrie had been born.

20 January 1793

Admiralty, Whitehall

To Alan Lewrie, Lt., Royal Navy

Sir,

My Lords Commissioners for executing the Office of Lord

High Admiral require your most immediate attendance

upon their Lordships. You are charged and directed to…

"Well, damme." Lewrie breathed again. The chill settled lower, into his stomach, not just into his lungs. "Bodkins, put Anson back in his stall. I'll not ride today. Do you fetch out the closed coach, though. It's…" He drew out, opened, and peered at his damascened watch. "Nigh on seven. I wish to depart for London by ten."

"Yessir." The groom nodded, touching his forelock.

"Be it war, sir?" Cony inquired anxiously.

"No mention of it, Cony. Yet. Something that smells nigh to it, though. I'll see that messenger now. Do you look to my chest, see what's wanting. You know my needs well as any by now. And lay out a uniform for me. I'll be up directly."

"Aye, sir," Cony agreed, touching his own forehead in a lank-fingered salute of old habit. "Uhm, ya wish me t'be goin' wi' ya, up t'London, that is, sir?"

"Yes, Cony. At least to London." Lewrie smiled, though a bit grimly. "Once I'm assigned a ship… well, that's up to you. I allow you may be very helpful to Mistress Lewrie about the farm. Farming's what you know best. What you enjoy most?" "Uhm, yessir." Cony shrugged.

"Estate agent… overseer…" Lewrie rambled on as they entered the warm kitchens, where the maids and scullery wenches walked small about the elegant but threatening stranger down from London. "No need to take you off to sea. And there's Maude down at the Ploughman, is there not?"

"Uhm, yessir," Cony blushed, grinning a little. The publican of the Olde Ploughman was getting on in years, and his pretty little spinster daughter Maude was of marriageable age. Mister Beakman was now a widower, had no sons interested in inheriting the public house, and both father and daughter were fond of Cony. Almost everyone in Anglesgreen was. He'd make a fine partner in the business, and a knacky publican later. Whichever way he jumped, he'd land on his feet.

And do it on dry land, if he has any sense, Lewrie thought.

"I'm Lewrie, sir," he announced himself to the stranger. "You will wish a quick reply to carry back?"

'That would be welcome, sir," the functionary nodded. "Though I've several more officers to call upon about Chid-dingfold and Petersfield before returning, sir. The paper-work, you see, sir-"

"Quite," Lewrie grimaced at the necessity, and made the messenger grin, too, in recognition of the volumes of correspondence government seemed to generate over trifles. "Come to my study so I may scribble you something suitable. Bring your tea. I've some brandy there. A dollop'd thaw your bones, I wager?"

"Oh, aye, sir!"

As they left the kitchen for the central hall, Lewrie espied Caroline and the boys. She stood trembling, with a wild cast to her expression, with the petulant, whiny children tucked into her skirts. They couldn't know what was transpiring, surely, he thought. But it was plain enough to them that something momentous was being played out.

"Alan… dear," she called after him, clearing her throat, but almost in a whisper. He thought to pause, to speak a few consoling words to her before joining the Admiralty messenger in the study. It was her furrow and her frown that stopped him. Almost accusatory, it was, the vexed look Caroline might bestow upon an unruly boy as a warning that further such behaviour would call down chastisement.

"I'll be with you shortly, dear," he said, instead.

"Is it war?" Alan asked after he had closed the double doors upon the rest of the household.

"Not yet, sir." The messenger scowled, busy at the wine cabinet. "But they've been calling officers and warrants back for weeks, now. I heard tell the 'Press has been warned. Just in case."

"Doesn't say much for me, then." Lewrie forced a chuckle. "I was one of the first returned in '91."

"Our Lords Commissioners never released some of those called in over Nootka Sound, sir. The Fleet stayed at least quarter-strength since, once the Terror began in Paris. Uhm, hah… you see, sir, you are most certainly in the lower half of the lieutenants' list, so if we are at quarter-strength, d'ye see-"

"Lower third, or lower, actually," Lewrie scoffed, sitting at his desk. "February of '82." He laid out a fresh sheet of vellum, a pot of ink (black, preferred), and took a small penknife to the nib of the nearest goose quill.

He got through the date and his local address, the address of authority, and his salutation. Then sat, quite nonplussed, wondering exactly what the Devil he would say to Our Lords Commissioners.

Milords; bugger off. Perhaps?

The Navy had not been his career of choice; he could thank his father, far off in Bengal with the East India Company Army, for pressganging him into service, for he should have inherited the money from Granny Lewrie long before. He had never been what one might call your truly glad sailor. Thirteen years of his life he had given the Fleet (not without much real choice, truth to tell), nine in active service, midshipman to lieutenant-and these last four "beached" on half-pay.

He thought the French had a particularly apt word for these four years-they usually did, damn their troublesome, rebellious eyes: Ennui. Boredom and isolation. Shunned, and out of his depth. And as anchored as Ulysses in his dotage.

Without a war (and it was now certain one was coming, in spite of his assurances to dear Caroline), what would his life hold for him? More of Anglesgreen, still a leper to his neighbours, until such time in a misty future, when he had outlived Sir Romney and Uncle Phineas, and the grudge had faded out? Harry would inherit, become baronet, marry some unfortunate mort, and let it go at last? Lewrie might become a proper squire then, with owned, not rented, acres, have right to hunt and fish his own lands, instead of waiting to be asked by others' charity; some stooped and graying rustic with a fund of tedious yarns, and hair growing from out his ears, with a nose that bowed in low conge to his departing teeth! A well-respected, cackling bore, no matter that he bored his audience at the Red Swan at last, instead of the Ploughman.

And whilst there'd been war with the French, as tall frigates prowled like tigers in the night, bright-eyed and hungry to claw at each other, as line-of-battle ships formed to bellow, to make or break history, he would have been nothing but a spectator, and one far back in the cheap seats, too! He would farm, hey! Read the news down from London, in the Naval Chronicle, brandish his walking stick and "Huzzah!" each victory… or write scathing letters to the Times.

Caroline needed him, though, would prefer this time…

He shuddered with revulsion at the image of his respectable civilian future-Caroline or no.

No, like his father, Sir Hugo St. George Willoughby, of the 4th, the King's Own, now of the 19th Native Infantry, had said to him once, after they were reconciled in the Far East…