A King's Commander (23 page)

And what better way to erode the efficiency of his ships, than to expose officers and men to the debilitating effects of the pox and the Mercury Cure.

God, even Nelson and Fremantle had succumbed! Fremantle had met some Greek doxy through old John Udney, the British Consul. Another of the Prize Agent, Prize Court set, and Lewrie strongly suspected he also lined his purse as a pimp to the visiting squirearchy. Nelson took up with one Adelaide Correglia. No raving beauty, that; no sylphlike armful! The night Lewrie had dined aboard
Agamemnon
at anchor, that doxy—who'd moved into the great-cabins with Nelson, for God's sake!—had trotted out to table in little more than a sheer nightgown and dressing robe. So tight bodices or corsets wouldn't aggravate the abscess in her side she temporarily suffered, so please you! Prating, silly, and inane, twittering and tittering—and that went for the pair of them.

Why, the man'd made a perfect
ass
of himself over the mort, all but cutting her meat for her, and feeding her forkfuls, all but wiping her chin, and toasting her so lovey-dovey every five minutes it'd damn' near made him spew. And, as Fremantle had put it on their way back to their gigs, “makes himself ridiculous with that woman. Damned bad supper, to boot!”

No, Hotham had been just as bedazzled, and as buggered, as any of his officers, and when word finally came, he'd scrambled to sortie, with only thirteen of the line. Well, fourteen, if one could count a Neapolitan 3rd-Rate seventy-four as seaworthy, or battle-ready.

That first set-to in March had been in weather as scant, and a wind as light, as today's. Three days pussy-footing about—
farting
about!—and unable to close each other. And, even with twenty-two sail of the line, Martin had proved to be just as timorous as Hotham, And just about as benighted, with no eagerness to do much of anything.

While the rest of the fleet had almost posed for paintings atop a mirror-smooth sea, Nelson in
Agamemnon,
thankfully without Adelaide Correglia, had forged ahead, dragging Fremantle's
Inconstant,
Cockburn's
Meleager
frigate, and a few more with him to harry the tail end of the French, who had been content to run for home and Mother, with their tails tucked between their legs.
Jester
had been right up with them, and for a time, it had seemed as if that epic sea battle would occur.

Two French seventy-fours shot to lace,
Ça Ira
and
Censeur,
after Nelson fought them for two-and-a-half hours of close cannonading. Over one hundred men killed or wounded aboard
Ça Ira
alone, as opposed to only seven wounded aboard
Agamemnon!

Which shows what a proper-drilled ship can do, Lewrie thought; and what a barking shambles a bad'un can be.

But what could have been accomplished if Hotham hadn't broken off that action, too? Hadn't said “. . . we must be content, we've done pretty well.”

Then, after “saving” Corsica, Hotham had scattered his frigates and such to the four winds on patrol duties and ineffective blockades, trundling his “liners” back to Leghorn. Perhaps Mister Udney had a doxy lined up for
him?

Jester
had at least scooped up two more prizes from that spell of duty, though they'd not seen a penny of the prize money for them yet, either. One of them, a supposedly neutral Danish merchant brig, was still anchored at San Fiorenzo, while the Prize Court nattered as to whether her papers were colorable or not, even though she'd been crammed to her deck heads with warlike material.

Another bad comparison between Hood and Hotham; at least under Hood, the Prize Court had been a
tad
less venal and corrupt. Less so than what anyone familiar with a court's doings could expect. Hotham in charge, though . . .

No, not in
charge,
Lewrie sneered; just bloody
here,
but never in charge, even of his own bowel movements!

• • •

Now, today's muddled fiasco. Again, there'd been rumors that Martin was to come out, this time to escort merchant ships to North Africa to pick up corn so the south of France wouldn't starve, or riot, when their own crops failed for two summers in a row. The piratical Barbary States had grain aplenty, and were more friendly with France than anyone else they pirated.

Yet what had Hotham done with that information? Go look for a convoy? Cover Marseilles and Toulon so tightly that no merchant-men might come out?

No, again! He'd sat as “sulled up” as a bullfrog at San Fiorenzo, conserving what little energy he was still thought to possess, and had detached Nelson with a squadron of the
very
sort of ships that should have been prowling the seas in search of the French convoy, or their fleet; not west to interdict—but east, to Genoa! To buck up the Austrians, who didn't have a navy to play with, and were loath to advance one foot west of Genoa without a guard on their seaward flank.

Nelson in
Agamemnon,
clinging to his half-worn-out sixty-four-gunner like she was a lucky talisman, even though he'd been offered command of newer, larger ships time and again. Fremantle's
Inconstant
and a fine thirty-two-gun frigate the
Southampton,
Cockburn's
Meleager,
two brigs of war,
Tarleton
and
Tartar,
the frigate
Ariadne, Jester,
and a small fourteen-gun brig-sloop, HMS
Speedy,
and the humble cutter
Resolution.

How satisfying it had been, six days earlier, to set sail for Genoa and Vado Bay, under a commander who could at least be trusted to charge into battle. And to get away from Admiral Hotham.

Naturally, it'd turned into a farce. Not a day out, they'd run into Admiral Martin's entire fleet, twenty-three sail of the line, and supporting frigates, stooging about northeast of Corsica! They'd spent a day and a night being chased themselves this time, turning to combine against any French frigates that got too near, then spinning away when the odds became too daunting. Chased all the way back to San Fiorenzo, and Hotham's “aid.”

Seven hours it had taken him to rescue them, to recall his shore parties and libertymen, to weigh anchor and lumber out on a poor wind to their rescue. Seven hours of damned fine seamanship to stand off-and-on San Fiorenzo Bay and not be crushed like bugs by the weight of the approaching French line-of-battle ships before Hotham could save them!

And then had come these last four days of slack-weather pursuit, to end up off Toulon, letting Martin get away again. Toothless hounds too feeble to bark; chasing each other back and forth without even a nip on the hindquarters to show for it, as if making a show for the young dogs in the neighborhood; that they still knew how to beat the hounds. Even if neither one couldn't have cared less if they'd actually caught the other. Or remembered what it was a dog really did with a rival dog.

“Piss on the gatepost,” Alan snickered with dismal amusement, “and toddle off with yer tail high.”

“Sir?” Midshipman Spendlove inquired, close at hand.

“Just maundering, Mister Spendlove. Pay me no mind,” Alan said, blushing to have been overheard, and glowering hellish-black.

“Aye aye, sir,” Spendlove replied meekly, scuttling away from his captain's possible wrath.

As if serving under Hotham were not plague enough, as if a pagan god had decided to muck about with his life of a sudden, everything he held dear seemed to be tumbling down like a house of cards.

Prize Court, Phoebe . . .
Caroline!

He shook himself and shrugged deeper into his coat, turned his face to the dubious freshness of the wind to blank his thoughts of how near he'd come to being a widower.

After Calvi had surrendered, as if a floodgate had been opened, letters from home had begun to arrive on an almost monthly schedule to keep him informed of hearth and family. Caroline was a highly intelligent woman, witty and expressive, and her many letters well-crafted and filled with newsy, chatty gossip, local lore, the farm's doings, what his children had got up to. And how much she loved him.

All of which had made him squirm, but only a little, with shame of his betrayal. Yet it was a socially acceptable betrayal, was it not? Most English gentlemen of his stripe married more for connections or land than love, in the beginning. One had to be careful; it took a rich man's purse to attain a Bill of Divorcement from some unsuitable mort, so they weighed their options, and the girl, and the material benefits she could bring to the marriage, with care. Beauty was valued, as was a pleasant and agreeable demeanor. Mean t'say, if one were stuck forever-more . . . !

But once at least one male heir was assured of living to adulthood—two or three was much better—it was expected by both parties in the better sort of Society that the man would keep a mistress for his pleasure, sparing his wife the perils of further childbirth. They might be civil, sociable, and agreeable to each other, still. But it was understood, and tacitly accepted; as long as one had discretion. Many wives even welcomed such an arrangement, and felt a sense of relief. Some few men with the purse, and the
ton,
for it, kept more than one mistress. A man had his needs, after all! Especially one facing such a lengthy separation, in time and distance.

But Caroline's letters had stopped arriving toward the end of January. Gales and storms in the Channel, the Bay of Biscay? A packet ship lost on-passage, and her latest missive with it? The risk of correspondence over such a long distance that every Navy man faced, Lewrie could have thought. Yet there were letters from London that still arrived, letters from Burgess Chiswick, and his father, in India.

Finally, in April, just after the first indecisive set-to against the French fleet, a letter had come from his brother-in-law Governor in Anglesgreen. And worry, and longing, coupled with his lingering sense of guilt, in
spite
of being such a smug hound with purse, needs, and
ton,
had chilled him to the bone as soon as it was in his hands.

Alan, I most sadly take pen in hand to discover unto you, and most strictly against my dear Sister Caroline's Wishes, and most rigorous Instructions, that both she, and your Children, have been on the very verge of Death.

There'd been wave after wave of illness in the parish, beginning sometime after the harvests were in, and continuing into the new year. Flux, grippe, the influenza and fevers. Many of the elderly and weak, the very old and very young about Anglesgreen had been taken to their beds, and a fair number never rose from them, but had joined what the vicar at St. George's termed The Great Majority.

First to succumb had been little Charlotte, then Hugh, lastly Sewallis, all within two days and nights. First sniffles, headaches and fevers, followed by incontinent bowels, vomiting, chills and the most heartrendingly wet, racking coughs.

No cordials, no herbal teas or purchased nostrums or folklore remedies had helped, not even warming pans, hot and dry flannels, or hot and steamy flanneling. The local surgeon-apothecary was an idiot. They'd sent at last to Guildford for a gentleman-physician educated at Edinburgh, whose Jesuit's bark, opium, and antimonies had broken their fevers, whose bleeding had restored the balance of their humors, and whose pills and drops had quieted their coughs, and allowed them to draw breath once more.

Passing quiet, restful nights seemed to restore them wondrous well, though they were for days afterward listless and languorous, quite febrile and weak, with but the most delicate digestions or appetites, as you may well imagine.

Caroline had been too busy to write, Governor further imagined he might understand; later, worn down and too exhausted by her valiant struggle to preserve her dear children's very lives. So, at the very instant that the family could feel relief, and give thanks to a merciful God, Caroline had also come down with chills and fever, headaches and sniffles, then collapsed over supper, pale as Death itself!

Before she took to her bed, she enjoined us all, dear brother-in-law, that we were, under the sternest threats, not to communicate to you any of their travails, so that you, so nobly and honorably in Arduous Service for King and Country, should have no distracting Worries, no additional Burden that might affect that Service. I thought it quite daft but demurred, for the nonce. However, now that . . .

They'd despaired so much of her life, as Caroline suffered very much more than the children had, that they'd sent to Guildford for the physician once more, and he had all but thrown up his hands, and told them to expect the worst.

Governor Chiswick was also a skilled writer, much
too
damned skilled! Like some droning bore who relished describing every agony of his own surgery for a stone, Governor had gone to wretched, terrifying and overly excessive details, painting a picture so vivid and ghastly of Caroline's, and the children's every moan, of how haggard and bedraggled, how skeletal her visage had appeared as she'd sunk to the last extremes. How scant her breath, how thready her pulse . . . !