“What any man would pay for.” Dolly frowned. “They thought him a little silly, I think. And ⦠he wasn't exactly that popular with his fellow officers. I don't know why, but I always
got that feeling when we were around them. Some jealousy, some argument or something.”
“Goddamn!” Alan exclaimed, after he had folded out a large sheet of paper all hung with ribands and wax seals. “You've not talked to them at all?”
“I was afraid they'd sneer at me, Alan,” she whispered.
“Not while you hold his commission document, they wouldn't!”
“What is that?” she said, with all innocence.
“My dear Dolly,” he began, rocked back on his heels by her naivety. “You know that officers in the British Army
buy
their commissions. Umhumm, and do you know that they pay a lot of money for the privilege of never doing a decent day's labor again? Keep the bloody sword, hang the watch in the window for pigeons to peck on, here's your real money!”
“I meant to have it framed, as a memento, but I couldn't afford to yet,” she said, staring at him goggle-eyed with building wonder.
Why, dear Lord, is every woman I meet and hop into bed with as feeble in the brains as cold, boiled mutton? he wondered to himself with a shake of his head and a reflective grin.
“It costs an ensign in a good regiment three hundred pounds to buy a commission. A lieutenancy goes for about five hundred, and I have it on good authority that a captaincy is worth nigh on a thousand pounds, Dolly. As dear Roger's nearest living relative, the one he's most like willed everything to, you now own it, d'you see, girl? It's like a small-holding, it's yours to sell.” She stared at him as if he wasn't quite getting through to her. “For
money
.”
“Oh, Alan!” she shrieked and flung herself on him, bearing him over on his back on the cold bare boards to straddle him and chortle with glee while she rained kisses and squeezed until he thought he might see stars. “I'm saved! I'm saved! You saved me, you dear man, you wonderful, lovely man! How can I ever repay you, dearest Alan?”
“Well, if you put it that way ⦔ He laughed heartily with her.
“I can go home to England! I don't have to be anyone's mistress, or anyone's whore! Oh, out of my darkest night, God has shown me the way to security! How can I ever thank you?”
“I'm just glad I could do something ⦔
“I won't have to drudge as someone's domestic back home. I can live well, if I watch my pennies, and I'm not a spendthrift,
I know how to economize and manage. I did well enough on Roger's pay and the pin-money he allowed me. I made a good home for him, and I can make a good home for myself. Or”âshe calmedâ“I could make a good home for you. Yes, I could, Alan. I could stay here on Antigua, take a tidy set of rooms, nothing grand, no need for servants ⦠well, maybe a maid to help me clean. I'm used to cleaning for myself, Alan. And she would not have to be a live-in, just a day-servant. What's that, six pounds a year, and a dress and shoes? Oh, would it not be grand, Alan? You would come in from your ship, and we could be together again.”
Hmm, he considered hard. She's a wonderful gallop, no question about that, and it wouldn't cost me tuppence. How many men can boast of free mistresses. Even if she does stray, or take in someone while I'm at sea, it's nothing more than I'm used to already. Had I bought her, I'd worry about that anyway.
“Dolly, my dearest, loveliest girl, I'll be gone for months on end. I'd love to see you again, but it would be so cruelly lonely for you. Best you go home to England, much as I could wish ⦔
“And if I just happened to be here, Alan dearest? Would we be able to share things? There's no one else in your life?”
“Of course we could, Dolly. And no, there's no one else.”
“Oh, you have made me the happiest woman tonight. In all ways, my wonderful Alan. I had not hoped to aspire to so much joy in my life ever again. I shall love and cherish you while I have you, and you shall know how much joy you've given me by how much I give myself to you. Like now. Say you're not so tired, dear Alan. Can we do that again, could we please, my love?”
H
is vouchers and records were under his arm, and in order in a sailcloth bundle. He had traded off his midshipman's rigs, sold that now decidedly shoddy dirk that had once gleamed with “gold,” and had his new uniforms in his sea chest.
There had been a need to dip into his hidden cache of guineas to pay for his new finery, to equip himself with the luxury of a personal telescope, cases of wine, fresh cabin stores such as cheese and jam. And he had spent money on his man Cony's rig as well; new shoes and buckles (pinch-beck but serviceable), a new tarred hat, short blue jacket with brass buttons and slop trousers.
He had not gotten much sleep, in the end. Between the party that had turned into a drunken brawl, his escape, his passionate night with Dolly, which had lasted until dawn, and then a hectic round of chores, he was just about done in. Up and out on a crust of bread and a single cup of tea to move her to his old lodgings, which were a bit more expensive but much nicer and more refined. A quick meeting with his shore agent to deal with her affairs with her husband's regiment, a gift of twenty pounds to get her settled and tide her over until she could sell Roger Fenton's commission. And, lastly, a quiet word with the agent to tell him to advance her no more than absolutely necessary if she could not sell it.
At least, he decided, gaining his first easy breath of the day in the hired boat, he did not have a debilitating hangover. Her send-off, while the coach waited in the street to take him to the docks, had damned near killed him, and had he partaken as heavily as Ashburn and the others the night before, she damned well might have then and there.
“Da's de
Shrike
, sah,” the black boatman told him as he
sculled his small bum-boat across the still harbor at first light. Around them the watch-bells chimed from over thirty vessels as the morning watch ended and the forenoon began. Alan consulted his pocket watch and grunted in satisfaction that he would report aboard his new ship just a few minutes after the last stroke of eight in the morning.
Shrike, he could see as they got close, was foreign in origin, probably a prize. She sported two masts crossed with square-sail yards, but on her after main-mast he could espy a brailed-up sail on the lowest yard, the cro'jack, which on the three-masters he had served was usually bare. On a brig, though, they would need that main course for more speed, for there would be only the fore-course forward which might be winded if the ship sailed in a stern or quarter wind. Her spanker boom and gaff were also much larger than anything he had seen before, and were fixed to an upright spar doubled to the main-mast, which officially made her a snow instead of a brig, possibly an alteration any captain could make in the rig of his ship without upsetting higher authorities, as long as it did not cost the local dockyard too much in government funds or supplies.
Shrike's
jib-boom and bow-sprit were different also, steeved at a much less acute angle to the deck, which would give her larger heads'ls, and, with the big spanker, more windward ability.
“Damme, but she's a shabby old bitch,” he was forced to admit to Cony.
The hull was dark, almost black, but, like an old coat, showing a rusty brown tinge from years of exposure to weather and gallons of paint and linseed oil. The gunwale stripe might at one time have been buff, but had faded to a scabbed and blistered dingy off-white. And where one expected to see gilt paint around the beakhead, entry port and transom carvings, white lead had been applied in lieu of a prosperous captain's gold. Her masts, though, and her running and standing rigging, were in excellent shape, bespeaking a captain poor in pelf, not care.
“Shrike,
the butcher bird,” Alan commented to Cony as he spotted the figurehead and pointed it out. The bird's wings were fanned back as part of the upper beakhead rail supports, clawed feet extended in the moment of seizure of prey, and the hooked bill open to reveal a red tongue. It too needed a paint job to restore the white, grey and brown tones of the real bird.
“Seen 'nough of 'em at 'ome, sir.” Cony grinned in remembrance of his forest-running days in Gloucestershire. “Spikes
their kills ta thorn bushes. Mayhap we'll be a'spikin' some Frogs an' Dagoes the same, sir.”
“We'll see.”
“Ahoy the boat!” came a call from
Shrike
's entry port.
“Aye aye!” Cony bawled back at them, showing the requisite number of fingers to alert their new ship's side-party to the proper show of respect to be presented.
The bum-boat chunked against the ship's side, and the native bargee and Cony held her fast to the chains while Alan squared himself away and took hold of the man-ropes, which were hung old-style from the entry port, without being strung through the boarding ladder battens. It wasn't much of a climb, though, nothing as tall as a frigate's sides, and he made it easily without tangling his hanger between his legs or otherwise embarrassing himself.
The bosun's pipes began to squeal and the Marines slapped their muskets to “present arms” as his head came up over the deck edge, and he was about to congratulate himself on arriving with the proper amount of dignity. It was at that moment that an impressively large ginger ram-cat with pale gold eyes of a most evil cast accosted him at the lip of the entry port. The cat took one look at him, bottled up, arched his back, laid back his ears and uttered a loud trilling growl of challenge.
“Fuck you, too,” Alan gasped, almost startled from his grip on the man-ropes. “Shoo. Scat!”
The cat took a swipe at him, then ran off forward with a howl, there to take guard upon the bulwarks and wash himself furiously as he thought up a way to get even.
“Lieutenant Lewrie, come aboard to join,” Alan said, once he was safely on his feet on the upper deck. There was very little gangway overlooking the waist, just high enough above the upper deck to clear the guns.
“Ah'm Fukes, the bosun, sir,” a male gorilla in King's Coat told him, knuckling his rather prominent brow ridge from which sprouted a solid thicket of white eyebrows over a face only a mother could love. “This'ere's Mister Caldwell, the sailin' master. Lef'ten't Walsham o' the Marines ⦠an' you'll be the new first lef'ten't, sir?”
“Yes, I suppose I am. I'd admire if you could lend my man Cony a hand with my dunnage. Is the captain aboard?”
“Aye, sir, 'e's aft in 'is cabins. Ah'll 'ave ya took there directly, sir,” Fukes went on, turning to pause and spit a large dollop
of tobacco juice into a spit kid. “'Ere, Mister Rossyngton, show the first officer aft.”
“Aye aye, sir,” a rather well turned out midshipman answered. “This way, if you will, sir.”
Some ship! Alan thought with a sudden qualm of nerves. Fukes and the other senior warrants he had seen on the gangway had been much of a kind; overaged, craggy and white-haired, way senior to him in sea experience. Caldwell, the sailing master, was a gotch-bellied little minnikin in his fifties with square spectacles at the tip of his nose.
Walsham, the Marine officer, was only a second lieutenant, a boy who appeared no older than the run-of-the-mill midshipman, while his sergeant looked old enough to have helped shoot Admiral Byng in the last war. And the doddering old colt's-tooth who sported a carpenter's apron and goggled a drooling smile at him in passing had to be seventy years old if he was a day!
“Mister Pebble, the ship's carpenter, sir. Mister Pebble, the first officer, Lieutenant Lewrie,” Rossyngton introduced smoothly.
“Ah de do, sir, ah de do!” the oldster gammered through a nearly toothless mouth, what little hair he had left on his bare head waving like strands of cotton in the slight wind. “A' firs' un died, ye know, o' the quinsy, warn't it, Mister Rossyngton?”
“His heart, Mister Pebble,” Rossyngton prompted
“Ah, 'twuz Curtiss died o' quinsy. Shame, Mister Lewrie, young man like Tuckwell a'dyin', an' 'im not fifty,” Pebble maundered wetly.
“Do they do a lot of dying aboard
Shrike
?” Alan asked as Rossyngton led him below to the cabins under the quarterdeck.
Rossyngton hid his smirk well, not sure of what sort his new first lieutenant was. “They keep you awake at night, expiring with loud thuds, sir.”
“Ah,” Alan managed to say, fighting manfully to keep a straight and sober face as was proper to a ship's officer. Rossyngton looked to be the product of a good family, a manly get of about seventeen or so years, and someone with whom Lewrie would have felt at home in shared outlook; and by the devilish glint in Rossyngton's blue eyes, he would have been a mirthful companion, were circumstances different.
The Marine sentry at the cabin doors announced him loudly with a smart crash of his musket butt, and a voice bade Lewrie enter.
Well, he ain't Noah, there's a blessing, Alan thought as he beheld his new master and commander.
Lieutenant Lilycrop had to be the oldest junior officer that Alan had ever laid eyes on, and he had seen some beauties in his time. He was near sixty, with a face as withered as an illused work glove, a pug-nosed, apple-cheeked Father Christmas whose chest and belly had merged into a massive appliance round as iron shot. He wore his own hair instead of a wig, and that hair was curly and cotton-white, but clubbed back into a seaman's queue that even plaited reached down to his middle back. Lost in the mass of wrinkles about his eyes, two bright orbs of brown could now and then be glimpsed.
“Lieutenant Lewrie, sir. Come aboard to join, sir,” he said, producing his ornate commission document which warned “ ⦠nor you nor any of you may fail as you will answer the contrary at your peril,” his orders from the flag to come aboard, and his pay and certificates.
“Well, sit you down, young sir,” Lilycrop growled in a voice gone stentorian and hoarse from a lifetime of barking orders. “Mind the kitty.”
Alan halted his descent into the chair and looked down to see a black cat stretched out in the seat, tail lazily curling and uncurling like a short commissioning pendant. Not knowing what to do, and never being terribly fond of cats anyway, he gently shoved it out of the chair so it could hop down on its own with a small meow of disappointment.
“That's Henrietta, oh she's a shy 'un, she is, but she'll take to you soon enough,” Lilycrop said, beaming at the black cat, dropping into baby-talk as he addressed her directly. “Henrietta takes time to make up her mind about people, yes she does, don't you, sweetlin'. Now Samson, here”âLilycrop changed tone to introduce Alan to a black-and-white-and-grey parti-colored ram-cat which had jumped up onto his desk to be stroked and picked upâ“Now Samson, he's a standoff-ish young lout, won't have truck with none but me, d'y'see? There's a good boy.”
Goddamme, somebody in the flagship must have it in for me in the worst way, Alan sighed to himself. I've seen saner people eat bugs in Bedlam. Was there some back I didn't piss down right? Some grudge getting paid back on me? Did they mix me up with somebody with two heads? God rot 'em, I thought I'd go the least senior officer into a real ship, not this ⦠Ark!
“Let's see what he's made of, this young'un of ours, Samson.”
While Lilycrop bent over to peruse his records, Alan took the time to look about the cabin, and it was spartan in the extreme. Paint the color of old cheese coated the walls and interior partitions, the result of mixing what was left over from various lots. The deck was covered by sailcloth painted in black-and-white squares, and plain sailcloth made up the curtains over the stern windows. But there was no embroidered coverlet over the hanging bed-box, no padded cushions on the transom settee. The desk, the dining table, the chairs, were all harshly simple and dull, as utilitarian as a wash-hand stand. There was no wine cabinet present, and Alan suffered another qualm as he considered that his new captain was one of those evangelizing tee-totalers.
The sword that hung on the pegs on the wall next to a shabby grogram watch coat was a heavy, older straight sword more suitable for an infantry officer in a Highland regiment. Evidently, Lieutenant Lilycrop did not have two farthings to rub together other than Naval pay, and that none too good for a lieutenant in command of a small ship below the Rate. Come to think on it, mine's low enough at two shillings six pence a day. Alan grimaced. What does he get, four or five at best?
Now that his eyes had adjusted to the gloom of the cabins, he could see that there were more cats present; a lot more. Cats of every color and constitution, some old and grizzled from fights and amours, some spry and young, and at least four kittens being nursed by their mother on the captain's berth. And there was a barely perceptibleâodor.
“Ah, you've done a lot in a little over two years' service,” Lilycrop finally commented, laying down the documents. “But not much more practical experience than a half-cooked midshipman.”
“Aye, sir. Sorry if I do not please, but I shall endeavor to do so as we progress together,” Alan said, on guard at once but making keen noises.
“A fledglin' just outa the nest. Nay, more a chick fresh from the shell,” Lilycrop maundered. “My last first officer ⦠oh, now there was a tany-handed young cock ⦠'twas sorry I was to lose him. But, we do what we can with what we're given, an' if the flag says you're to be first lieutenant into Shrike, then growl I may, but agree I must.”