A King's Commander (3 page)

Black leather grip wrapped in gilt wire, a slim, gilt-steel swept hilt with a large oval guard to protect his fingers. There were no seashells this time, but a fairly plain pattern of stylized oak leaves. The scabbard was black leather, with gilt furnishings. They had soldered a coin-silver plaque to the outer face of the upper furnishing, with a pair of crossed cannon over a fouled anchor engraved, wreathed in oak leaf. Almost like the design of his old watch fob . . . which was now the prize of some garlic-breathed French sergeant of Lancers, too, unfortunately!

New watch and fob, new grogram boat cloak, shaggy watch coat, dressing robes for warm or cold weather . . . it had turned into
such
an orgy of Spending and Getting! And guilt over his pleasures had driven him to purchase even more, for Caroline, the children, Sophie . . . even a pair of bosun's pipes for Porter and Cony, to mark the warrants he'd gotten Porter and Bittfield, and the Admiralty's recognition of his own prerogative to promote Will Cony to bosun's mate.

Then, recruiting drove him from their arms, setting up his own 
rendezvous, printing fliers to summon calf-headed cullys who wished to go to sea, dealing with the local regulating captain of the Impress Service. The dockyard officials, the port admiral . . . to find the rope and timber to restock
Jester
with spare topmasts and yards, stuns'l booms, miles of cable and rope, fresh paint, gunner's tools . . . and the reams of correspondence necessary to beg for permission, to justify any slight alteration that might cost the Crown tuppence! Why, it was so odious, so all-encompassing an endeavor, that he'd been lucky to get a
meal
ashore with Caroline and . . . !

“Anchor's hove short, sir. Up and down!” Knolles called Lewrie from his reverie.

“Very well, Mister Knolles. Brace for the heavy heave. Topmen aloft. Free tops'ls only. Spanker, jibs and tops'ls. Inner, outer flying, and fore topmast stays'l from the foc's'le . . . main topmast stays'l and mizzen t'gallant stays'l. Should this perverse wind head us, I don't wish us fighting the square-s'ls all the way aground, on the Isle of Wight. Rough on the quick-work.
And
the career, hmm?”

“Aye, sir!” Knolles grinned in agreement.

“Wait to ring up or fish the anchors to the catheads, Mister Knolles.
Should
we get headed, we may have to anchor again, quickly. At the southern end of Saint Helen's Road, for certain, if a clear wind can't be found in the Channel.”

“Aye aye, sir. Mister Porter, Mister Cony!”

“Won't be elegant, but . . .” Lewrie shrugged to his sailing master, Mister Edward Buchanon, a swart and laconic-looking soul come down from the Medway to be appointed into
Jester,
fresh from years aboard other ships as a master's mate, and fresh from his Trinity House examination at Tower Hill. So far, Lewrie had found him slow in speech, dull as dishwater in conversation. But that, he suspected, was the man's innate caution, as an experienced seaman first, and as a “newly” with his first senior warrant, in a strange ship, second.

“Aye, Cap'um.” Buchanon nodded solemnly, with only a glint of delight in his eyes to betray him. “'Tis better t'be safe'n sorry, I says. Sloop o' war's
meant
t' dash, now an' agin. But, 'tis many a 
dashin'
cap'um laid himself all-aback b'cause o' it. You'll be tackin', soon's we have steerage-way, I suggest? Larboard tack'll take us too far t'loo'rd, toward the island.”

“I most certainly will, Mister Buchanon, and thankee kindly for your wise suggestion,” Lewrie happily agreed.

“Heave, and in sight!” The call came from the forecastle, as the best bower arose from the depths, trailing a storm cloud of mud and sand, and the stench of weed. Pawls clacked in the capstans, now rumbling as the hands trotted around them, bare feet drumming. Sails rustled and blocks cried as canvas sprouted on standing stays and on the tops'l yards high aloft.
Jester
heeled slightly to the pressure, stirring and shuffling side-wise, crabbing to the wind, with her tall rudder hard-over to windward, two quartermasters, Spenser and Brauer, maintaining their full weight on the double wheel. A gust, and she heeled a bit more, but a gust that backed more abeam this time, and Lewrie saw the quartermasters ease the helm a spoke or two, smiling.

“Der rutter, ve haff, Kapitan,” Brauer, the pale-blond Hamburg German informed him. “
Genug, aber . . .
she bites, zir.”

“Lay her full-and-by, close to the wind as she'll bear, till we have a goodly speed, then,” Lewrie told him, with relief in his voice. They
weren't
going to be blown sidewise onto the shore to their lee! “Ready to come about to the starboard tack.”

“Well, the lee tops'l braces, and belay!” Lewrie could hear Cony shouting from the waist to the gangway brace-tenders.
Jester
did not rate a yeoman of the sheets in her muster book, so a bosun's mate was called upon to supervise several chores beyond the duties of one aboard a larger ship.

Lookin' fine, Will Cony, Alan told himself proudly; lookin' fine. Cony had filled out a bit from the stripling volunteer he'd met aboard the
Desperate
frigate during the Revolution. Dressed now in a little style, with a white-taped short seaman's coat with gilt buttons, a dark blue waistcoat, and tailored slop trousers; good sturdy shoes on his feet, well-blacked, with silver buckles—solid silver, not coated “pinch-beck.” A petty officer's plain cocked hat instead of a round hat with low crown and flat, tarred brims. The former poacher lad from Gloucestershire had risen in the world. And would rise even further, if Lewrie could do anything about it, The fleet needed men like Will Cony.

“Three knots, sir!” Mister Midshipman Spendlove shouted from the taffrails, where he and his new mate, Midshipman Hyde, had just taken a cast of the log.

“Verdamt!”
Brauer groaned, and the sails aloft rustled, losing their luff, as the commissioning pendant streamed farther aft, to the starboard quarter.

“Headed, by God. Mister Knolles, ready about?” Lewrie called.

“Ready, sir.”

“Helm alee! Tack her, Mister Knolles. New course, due east.”

And
Jester
came about. Logy at slow speed, but her bows came around sweetly, the harbor sweeping by in an effortless pirouette. Seawater began to chuckle and gurgle under her forefoot, to murmur down her sides. From aft, there was a burbling, high-throated sound of chuckling from around her rudder as she settled on her new course and found new strength in a wind now come more from the south. From France, where she'd been born.

Across the harbor she trundled under reduced sail, Ride Sand and No-Man's-Land astern, and Horse Sand, and the Horse Tail, off her bows, in the narrows.

Directly the wind backed more from the east, she fell off and tacked again to larboard tack, with the wind striking her left side, with Warner Sand and St. Helen's Patch well to their lee. Monkton Fort was the stern range-mark, up to the nor'west.

Damme, can we do it in one long board? Lewrie exulted within. It would be a hellish comedown to chortle too soon, if he all but promised an easy departure, then was forced to come to anchor, after all. Best keep silent, for the nonce. And fret, while appearing a paragon of equanimity.

No, they were headed again as the fickle breeze swung back to the south. Larboard tack would force them down below St. Helen's Patch and toward Denbridge Point, into the cul-de-sac of Nab Rock, the New Grounds, and Long Rock.

“Ready about, Mister Knolles! Quartermasters, new course east-sou'east. Mister Buchanon, I propose to go east-about the New Grounds, and stand out into the Channel to make our offing, before we come about to west, in deep water.”

“Aye, sir, that'd be best, I think.” Buchanon nodded, after he'd pored over the chart pinned to the traverse board on the binnacle cabinet. He looked relieved, that his expertise would not be tested in those narrow channels, for below Denbridge Point there were also the risks of Betty's Ledge, the Denbridge Ledge close inshore, and North Offing, or Princessa Rock. They were day-marked, supposedly lit at night, but it was still a chancy business.

Around
Jester
came to the starboard tack, shallow Langstone Harbor and Cumberland Fort abeam to larboard. Chuckling again, as she passed four knots. There was a bit more chop now, the promise of the Channel's lumps to come. Current flowing one way, tide race opposed to it, and a southerly wind cross-patched atop it all, they would be careening and bounding like a coach on a winter-rutted road soon enough.
If
the wind stayed from the south, and they remained at east-southeast, close-hauled as dammit, right up against it.

Finally, St. Helen's town, and its creek on their starboard quarter! The last spit of New Grounds abeam!

“Ring up anchors, Mister Knolles, we've no more need of 'em. Ring up and fish, then buckle the hawseholes. Idlers! A tune, there!” Commander Lewrie demanded, utterly relieved, now that he and his fine little ship were safely on their way to making their offing.

The fiddle screeched again, in harmony with a tuning box and a fife. “Heart of Oak,” they began, and everyone knew it by heart— the former
Cockerel
's,
the fresh-caught merchant seamen from the press, the hands turned over from the guard ships, those that Howe hadn't put to sea aboard his line-of-battle ships; the ships' boys second class down from London and Mister Powlett's Marine Society, the Marines, and the sailors lent to him off Nelson's
Agamemnon,
off
Victory
and
Windsor Castle
to work her passage home; the midshipmen, of a certainty, and the brace of nine-year-old boys first class gentlemen volunteers who'd signed aboard as cabin servants to learn enough of the sea so they could become midshipmen someday themselves.

And the landsmen from the hulks and debtor's prisons, the volunteers from some rendezvous tavern inland, the sprinkling of Maltese seamen hired out by the Grand Masters he'd ended up with—soon they all would learn it, and know it by heart.

Come cheer up, my lads, 'tis to glory we steer
to add something more to this wonderful year;

Add
something,
Alan vowed to himself. Something writ large. I've never known a peaceful commission, a voyage that was “all claret and cruising.” Trouble . . . well, damme, trouble has a way of findin' me. This time, though . . . this time I'm all
but
a captain, on me own bottom with a ship and crew seasoned just enough for starters. And I'll make 'em even better. God save me, but I
love
this ship! What she's capable of, given half a chance. What I think this ship, and I, together, can accomplish. Father, Fate . . . the Navy,
beat
me into a sailor. Well then, so be it. A damn' good'un, too, I believe, at last. And who'd have ever thought it!

To honor we call you, not press you like slaves,

Oh, yes, we do press! Pressed
me,
in my own way, he laughed.

For who are so free as the sons of the waves?

Free? he scoffed. Mostly, yes, I am. At last! To run a ship my
own
way. Take her in that Rebel John Paul Jones's “harm's way.” And win! Damme, that's been my main fret—that I wanted
this
just as much as family . . . maybe more.

Heart of oak are our ships,
heart of oak are our men,
we always are ready;
steady, boys, steady . . .

Alan Lewrie had never been known as much of a singer, but this time he lolloped out the chorus in a bellow, along with the hands of the afterguard and the quarterdeck people.

We'll fight and we'll conquer, again and again!

A first lift of the bows to the Channel chops, a sluice of sea breaking over her forecastle. The rush of water creaming alongside of her impatient flanks. A sibilant, silken respiring, it was, of a live being made of oak and iron. Wind coming stronger aloft, keening among a maze of sheets, braces, jears, lifts and halliards, an Irish banshee's crooning moan among the stays and shrouds, with frolicsome flutterings, as luffs and ratlines danced.

HMS
Jester,
eighteen-gunned Sloop of War had been reborn; and reborn English. And around her beak-head rails, and new figure-head of a gilt-crowned fool, an English Channel now christened her with salt.

“Offing enough, Mister Buchanon,” Lewrie decided, one hour later. “Mister Knolles, come about to larboard tack, then make sail. Fore and main courses to the first reefs. Take in the main topmast, and the mizzen t'gallant, stays'ls.”

“Aye, sir . . . all plain sail. Bosun Porter? Ready about!”

More canvas—more speed; white-hued virginal canvas never exposed to weather except at sail drill during their working-up period of River Discipline. Course-sail brails undone, drawn down by their clews to sheet them home, with a wary portion gathered in reserve about the yards to the first line of reef points. Long yards creaking around to the best angle for a beam wind—a “soldier's wind”—powerfully long English yards, and wider, fuller-cut sails than the more-timid French practice.