Dewey Lambdin - King`s Captain Страница 9

Emily, the vicar's spinster-daughter-traipsing hopefully in a new ensemble of her own, in her father's wake, still single and becoming just the slightest bit long-in-tooth.

And the Embletons and their coterie were there of course. It was damn' near their church, their vicar, their village, their parish, maybe even their half of the county. Dignified old Sir Romney Embleton, now master of the hunt; his slack-jawed, half-wit son, Harry, sporting his Yeoman Cavalry uniform, spurs ajingling, and preening amidst the same pack of rogues and rousters who had always surrounded him-looking a bit put out that no one made notice of his lieutenant-colonelcy of militia-this Sunday, at least.

"Master of hounds now… Harry," Sir Hugo had muttered to his son. "Think he's given up on civilian suitings for the duration of the war, hey? An M.P… oh, very patriotic is Harry Embleton."

"God… pity the poor dogs then," Lewrie had whispered back, which had made his father snigger.

"The sort of man born t'be… cavalry," Sir Hugo sneered, and turned to translate that comment to his valet, a thoroughly ugly, one-eyed, old havildar, Trilochan Singh, of uncertain caste, from Sir Hugo's regiment in India. Had Lewrie run into him in a Calcutta baiaar back in the '80s, he'd have run for his life, for Trilochan Singh was raffish, bearded, and mustachioed, and looked the part of a swaggering badmash, a hill bandit who'd cut a man's heart out just 'cause it was a slow afternoon!

And no wonder Caroline dbesn 't know what to do with Father or his "man," Lewrie wondered to himself; aren't Sikhs supposed to carry five knives all the time, or is it one!1 No matter… God, I'll wager there're more'n one of our maids sportin' more than pinch marks!

"Sir Hugo…" Sir Romney said in passing, doffing his hat, cool but politely punctilious. "Vicomtess Sophie, enchantй… Mister and Mistress Lewrie…"

"Your servant, Sir Romney. And a lovely Easter Day it is, sir," Sir Hugo replied just as formally as they made their way to their waiting coach.

Galling as it was, Lewrie was forced by courtesy to doff a hat and make a "leg" to Sir Romney as well, as Caroline and Sophie dipped the baronet their own polite curtsies. Hugh and Sewallis emulated them, doffing hats, with Sewallis well on his way to a clumsy boy's "leg," as his mother had schooled him.

"Brigadier," Harry Embleton said, trailing his father.

"Ah, Colonel Embleton, sir." Sir Hugo fair-beamed.

"Leftenant Lewrie," Harry added, barely audible and stiff.

"Commander, actually," Lewrie gleefully corrected, turning on the "smarm," "and a good day to you, Colonel Embleton."

"Uhm, ah… yayss," Harry drawled, his gaze riveted upon that gold medal for a startled (or envious!) second or two before gaining his aplomb once more and greeting Caroline and Sophie.

Still cool with Caroline, Lewrie noted; and for good reason, if he knows what's good for him-so she don't take her horsewhip to him a second time! Pleasingly, Caroline gave as good as she got, as coolly pleasant yet formal-for the neighbours' sakes. Hello, though…!

He'spractically slobberin'! Lewrie thought, as poor Harry had a word with Sophie; poor chit, she can't know any better, surely, to simper back at him! Surely, Caroline's filled her in by now, if the servants hadn't, the new neighbours' daughters her age hadn't. Polite is one thing, but, for God's sake… she don't have to play coy at him!

A glance over his shoulder at his impatient sire, already at the coach door, stirred Harry to motion; and he doffed and bowed a parting before making all the haste that "genteel" and "aristocratic languid" would allow to catch his daddy up.

"Well, at last he spoke to you, Alan," Caroline had breathed in wonder, once the Embletons had departed. "The beginning of a thaw, do you not think?"

"Perhaps, my dear," Lewrie allowed, "but he still fair gives me the shivers. Or the 'collywobbles,' " he added, with a sarcastic grin.

"Alan, on church grounds… before the children!" Caroline admonished, all but poking him in the ribs. "May you not moderate your… saltiness?"

"My pardon, my dear."

"Well then, let us be on our way," Caroline decided, "shooing" the children towards their own coach. "Easter dinner will be at… Uncle Phi-neas's in his role as paterfamilias"-she sighed at the necessity-"where we may break our fast with the bounty of the season and celebrate our Lord's ascension."

"Oh, joy," Lewrie had snickered, "fresh-grown bounty… all those ground nuts, tree bark, and mud. Nothing but the best for his kin, hey?"

That set the children to tittering wildly.

"Bark and mud!" Hugh contemplated rather loudly. "Ugghh!"

"Mud pies, with caramel sauce," Lewrie abetted.

"Pig slop soup!" Hugh dreamt up. "With cracklings!"

"Mud pie an' caramel!" Charlotte all but shrieked. "Yahahaha!"

"Children!" Caroline snapped, "do consider where you are, making such a row on God's ground! And of who you are… and comport yourselves according. Alan, really…!" she cautioned, swiveling her gaze upon him, nostrils pinched and like to breathe fire.

"Slip o' th' tongue, mizzuz," he replied, a'grovel, tugging at his forelock like a day labourer and crouching from the waist. " 'Twas drink an' bad companions, ma'am… won't 'appen agin, ma'am, beggin' yer pardon. Oh, don't flog me, ma'am…!"

"Hhmmph!" was her nose-high comment for that, on public view… though there was a forgiving, amused sparkle to her eyes; and her vertical exclamation point of vexation between her brows wasn't that deep, now was it?

CHAPTER SIX

It was a splendid morning for a ride. The faint mists had gone away, the sun was well up, and the dew was barely dried. Birds chirped and fluttered over their newly hatched, young rabbits bounded ahead of them as they flushed them out, not so much a fearful scurrying as it was a playful, cat-like clearing of the ground in exaggerated and exuberant high-heeled hops. The aromas of new shoots, budding fruit-tree blossoms, of virginal, fresh-washed tree leaves commingled with the loamy scents of recently turned, slightly damp earth from planted fields… and the green-sap sweetness of hay, barley, wheat, hops, and rye sprouting in them; turned earth and a faint hint of manure turned in with it, came from the fallow fields which had been left for live-stock to graze over the past autumn, now broken for spring planting.

Skies of pale blue, brush-stroked and wisped with clouds, vivid greens of leaves, and even weeds, the paler greens of acres where crops had begun to venture forth, like a thin water-colour wash over a deep umber. Shin-high grasses waved as breezes took them on every cut-over hill, and the valleys between the woodlots, stark-stippled white with new lambs; and the darker, almost smoky blue-green of forests, copses, and woodlots, with here and there the faint skein of blue-white haze from brush-fires burning off piles of winter deadfall on such a safe, cool, moist day. And, as they topped one of the tumbling, sea-wave hills for a wider miles-long vista, even the faint sour reek from the fires seemed more the shades of living things than the spirits of the greyed, dessicated dead of winter.

Hugh, ever the adventurer, was further on ahead, urging his pony up another swelling hillock. Sewallis, now mounted on a proper horse (though a gentle runt of a twelve-hander), stayed closer to them, with his ears as a'cock as his mount's to an adult conversation, listening with sober interest. Or perhaps rueing that they hadn't taken any of his dogs along this morning-for fear of spooking Hugh's quest.

Or, Lewrie thought, giving him a glance; sulking that it's Hugh we're indulging, not him. Thought, bein' so priggish, Sewallis would be more tolerant of Hugh, his watchdog, not his rival. When did this rivalry start? he wondered, regretting being gone as they grew up.

"Won't you have the Devil's own time constructing yer lane?" Lewrie asked. "Up an' down, up an' down, all the way from our place to yours."

"Not if you come up Governour's lane first, Alan, me dear." His father smiled softly.

"Whatever possessed Uncle Phineas to sell you one square yard, I still have yet to fathom," Lewrie confessed, getting used to swaying and adjusting to Anson's gait over the hills.

"Money, my dear boy," Sir Hugo replied, smiling again. But it looked like a cadaverous leer of a practiced "Captain Sharp." "Oodles of money. Oh, I must admit he was loath, in the beginning, hoping it would confer to Governour entire after he was gone. Didn't wish to split it up. Not in his lifetime at least."

"Not after he spent most of his life scheming to shove it together." Lewrie snickered.

"Point taken, Alan," Sir Hugo grumphed. "Tolerate you as one of his tenants perhaps. Expect Governour to treat his brother, Burgess, the same when he returns from India. Pray God he does. Damned good soldier, is your younger brother-in-law. Would have got the regiment had I had anything to say about it, but… he was not the senior major. And money again… the new fool who got the colonelcy is a third son to one of the nabobs of 'John Company's' Governing Board."

"Ah… the same old story." Lewrie sighed philosophically. He had never prospered from family "interest"-or money, either-with this caddish old rakehell at his side to thank for both. At least in the Royal Navy, connexions could only advance the idiots just so far. Talent and seamanship counted in the long run. Though there were the admirals on foreign stations who'd made Post-Captains out of their sixteen-year-old sons, and…!

"Yes, and thank God for't," Sir Hugo hoorawed. "Else I'd have not gone a captain in a distinguished regiment like the Fourth. Been some tag-rag-and-bobtail ensign in a kutch pultan in the Fever Isles… or at John O' Groats! Well, no matter. Does Burgess not get a colonelcy from John Company, I'll have him back in England… on my staff…'fore he can turn his head to spit."

"Your staff?" Lewrie half-scoffed, swaying sidewise in his saddle to peer at his father, wondering who in his right mind would give him command of British troops again! "What bloody staff?"

"Why, I'm t'be military aide to the Lord Lieutenant of Surrey, Alan, me dear!" Sir Hugo hooted. "No matter the next-to-London counties are almost completely run by the Home Office; they still allow the token twits the office. And a dev'lish profitable office it is too! Yeomanry… militia forces… do I not make major-general by this time next year, I've either gone tits-up… or wasn't really tryin'!

"Another reason your Phineas Chiswick would sell me land, Alan," Sir Hugo confided, leaning a bit closer as they passed under some overhanging boughs at a sedate walk. "For the prestige o' havin' me for a neighbour! And for a word in his ear, now and again, as to profitable doin's… which I pick up from the gora-logs. Reason your Sir Romney is so affable, too… given the bile betwixt you and his son. Toad-eatin' ain't limited to the lower classes, Alan, me son. Oh, they're high and mighty men, Phineas and Sir Romney. Must confess, I care a power more for Sir Romney than ever I could for that… well. A decent, sporting gentleman he is. Dignified, of the old school. Now I'm a land-owner, and not a wealthy tenant, he's invited me to join the local hunt this winter. Committee decided I'm worthy."

"You!" Lewrie howled, feeling abused. Didn't they know what they were getting? he puzzled. Here he was, a long-time neighbour, affable as the day was long… well, to all but Harry. A bloody war hero, due to be a Post-Captain, equal rank to Harry, and he'd still be suckin' hoof-dust by the side of the road whilst his father would be garglin' claret stirrup-cups. This "fly" rogue, this…!

"Ride on, Sewallis. See what your brother's up to," Lewrie bade.

"But, Father…"

"Spur on now. He's out of sight and just like Goodyer's Pig, sure t'be in mischief."

"Oh, alright…" Sewallis grumbled.

"You'll blow it, you know," Lewrie told Sir Hugo, once Sewallis was out of earshot. "Sooner or later, that base nature of yours will…"

"Ours, me lad." Sir Hugo twinkled. "Ours."

"There'll be someone's unmarried daughter, a fit of temper, or something…" Lewrie stammered. "Grope yer host's maids, guesting…"

"Nothin' of the sort, lad." Sir Hugo dismissed him, waving a hand like shooing flies. Shooing horseflies for real, in point of fact. "For one, I ain't so spry these days that I can rantipole like a young buck-o'-the-first-head. I'm older and… pray God… wiser. Too wise t'be caught, do ye get my meanin'? For a second, I'll be off half the time to Guildford, London, or Glandon Park, where I may indulge those few penchants o' mine discreetly… with the better sort o' whores. I am a man o' simple tastes…," Sir Hugo modestly declaimed.

"Like I'm First Lord o' the Admiralty," Lewrie groused back.

"Import me a sportin' sort o' doxy, t'pose as my housekeeper," Sir Hugo speculated. "Done all the time and well you know it. Just the one woman, though… brrrr!" He shivered at the thought of anything close to "domestic bliss." Or a lack of variety. "Well, mayhap I'll just stick to the buffet assortment o' courtesans. I can hold my wine. There's never been anyone said I couldn't. I've drunk some ragin' sponges under the table in me time too; and that's sayin' something for a man who's spent his life at mess-night in royal regiments like the Fourth! Where d'ye think our good English peerage hide their drunks but in the Army, hey? Or… the clergy. Gad, do I slosh down a pint less than most vicars and bishops, I'm ready for beatification! Saint bloody Hugo… the Temperate, haw!"

"The Chaste," Lewrie offered, tongue most firmly planted in his cheek, laughing at the image. At the bloody statue! Or in going to a "Saint Hugo's" and kneeling for communion.

"Do I dissemble well enough, well… perhaps even that, me boy." Sir

Hugo nodded, as mischievous as ever. "Perhaps even that. There. There's the beginnings," he said, perking up like a gun dog on scent, as they topped a bald rise.

It was the tower, the broken-fanged, topless tower where he and Caroline had first kissed, declared their love. Atop a small, flat-top hill, with a view that went on for miles to the North and West. A rill ran South below it, almost lost in a thick stand of timber to its left. Another lay to the South, meandering the bottom of the last swale they had left, where they'd first dined alfresco. A long sweep and another rise, and there was the hill with the lone oak where he'd… and further beyond to the East, the sight of his own home farm, with Embleton estates beyond that. Just barely visible, sandwiched between, was the gloomy old red-brick pile which Phineas owned, off to the Nor'east.