“What sort o' letter?” Mr. Beauman asked, fetching out a squat brandy decanter and beginning to pour himself a drink.
“A rather risqué ⦠no, I don't think risqué does it justice. Pornographic, would be more like, sir,” Alan confessed, putting on his best shame-face and hoping they would eat this up like plum duff. “She dictated it, I wrote it. As a game, you see. Between bouts.”
“Ah?”
“In her bed, sir.”
“Aha!”
“With her belly for a writing desk, sir,” Alan finished with a shrug of the truly sheepishly guilty, a gesture he had practically taken patent on in his school days.
“God's teeth!” Mr. Beauman, Sr., exclaimed, settling down into a chair with a look of perplexity creasing his heavy features. “With her belly â¦
on
her belly, sir? Well, stap me! Don't see how it can be done, damme if I can. 'Course, I never tried
writin'
down there.”
“It's a rather firm belly, sir,” Alan commented.
“Aye, that'd help, I suppose,” the man nodded, beginning to grin slightly at the mental picture.
“Father, for God's sake!” Hugh exploded. “Whatever the reasons, no matter how innocent they were, people have taken a tar-brush to our family's good name and reputation, our social standing!”
“Start some gossip of your own, sir,” Alan suggested.
“Damn you, sir!” Hugh Beauman snarled. “We'll decide what's best for this family, not you. You've done enough.”
“And I would be willing to do anything to assist you, sir.”
“What sort o' rumor?” the father asked, slopping back a large swig of brandy and waving the bottle at them in invitation, which Alan agreed to readily; he was dry as dust from nerves, and three men drinking together and consorting on how to solve something were not three men who would be trying to stick sharp objects into each other.
“It was Mrs. Hillwood's pride and vanity that brought this about when I rejected her offer,” Alan said, taking a pew on the corner of a desk with glass in hand, though Hugh Beauman was still averse to showing him any leniency. “She didn't want me paying any attention to Lucy. I think the woman was jealous of anyone younger or prettier. Not so much that she was truly in love with me, but she disliked
losing,
d'ye see. And I don't think she cares much for the Beauman family in general, if you can believe the things she told me, trying to destroy my respect for the lot of you. Terrible things best left unsaid.”
“Like what, sir?” Hugh required. “Speak out.”
“She called you ignorant âChaw-Bacons' and âCountry-Harrys.' People with more money than style. She'd have me believe there's not a Christian among you, a one to be trusted. She blackened every name in the family with some back-stairs scandal. You, Hugh, Anne, Floss' husband ⦠even Lucy. She intimated all your morals were nonexistent.”
“Goddamn the bitch!” the father roared. “She said all that?”
“Not in one session, sir, but over the course of time.”
The Beauman men looked righteously outraged, but a little queasy as well; they knew their own sins well enough, and knew that Betty Hillwood was probably privy to most of them.
“Show me claws, would ya, hedge-whore?” Mr. Beauman ranted. “I'll give ya claws right back. Blacken me children, will ya? I'll hurt ya where it hurts the most, by damn if I don't!”
“In her pride, sir,” Alan prompted, feeling safe now from physical harm. “She wouldn't like people in her circle to know
that she had a lover spurn her, or that she had to buy his affections and then threaten so much to get him back, no matter who got hurt. It may not matter to anyone about Mistress Anneâanyone would have done for her purpose to try and ruin me, d'ye see. Clearing Anne's good name is only incidental, too.”
“It's not to me, damn your blood!” Hugh barked.
“If the gossip sounds like an attempt to clear Mistress Anne, it will fail, sir,” Alan told him, familiar enough with what stuck in the mind in all the scandals he had chuckled over back in London. “It will ring false. But, if enough shit flies and sticks to Betty Hillwood, Anne becomes an innocent victim in contrast. A month from now, they'll still be chewing on
la
Hillwood's bones, and if they ever think of my part in the affair, or Mistress Anne's, it will be favorable. If the affair is handled properly, of course.”
“Aye, t'would kill her soul, the crafty old witch!” Beauman, Sr., chortled with a cruel grin of anticipated pleasure at Betty's demise in Society. “Why, we'd skin her alive!”
“My God, you're too clever by half!” Hugh marveled, disgusted.
Alan didn't know quite how to answer that, so he kept silent for once. People with brains were usually mistrusted when they showed off.
“Perhaps it's best this happened after all, if only to spare us a son-in-law so scheming, father,” Hugh added, smiling slightly in some form of satisfaction that he wasn't going to be related to anyone as “smarmy” as Alan Lewrie. “You must know that you have totally ruined your hopes of eventual marriage with Lucy, no matter how this comes out.”
“I do realize that, sir,” Alan nodded, suddenly sobered. “And I must say it is the greatest regret of my life, and hopefully shall be from this moment on. I truly love her, you see.”
The frank admission shut them all up for a long moment, broken only by the sounds of brandy being slurped, as they all looked away and communed with their own thoughts, abashed by such a personal revelation usually left unspoken by English gentlemen, who would be the last men on the face of the earth to confess their love for anything other than horses, dogs or some institution larger than themselves.
“If there is some way you could convey to Lucy my regrets as to how this came about, and how I feel about her ⦔ Alan whispered, going for the brandy decanter unbidden. “And to
Mistress Anne my regrets as well that she had to involve herself at such a risk. And my undying thanks, tell her.”
Would they relent, he wondered with a final tug of hope? Was there some way he could still see Lucy in future, once this was all blown over? He had spoken the truth (mostly), and he had couched events in such a way that he did not appear a
total
rake-hell; a young and foolish buck, but not a complete wastrel.
“Aye, I'll tell her,” Mr. Beauman intoned sadly. “'Twasn't all your fault, though ya did show bad judgement. Like Hugh says, fer the best, mayhap. Few years from now, who knows? Good lesson fer ya, what?”
“Aye, sir,” Alan replied with a sad shudder of his own. “Well, I'd best be going then.”
“Father,” Hugh said as Alan finished his drink and picked up his hat from a side table, “if we mean to save our good name, we cannot send Mr. Lewrie away in shame.”
“Hey?”
“At least escort him to the docks. Make a show of being fond of him, a public show. Otherwise it still looks like we have a reason to duel him, or whip him,” Hugh went on, distaste curling his mouth at his own words. “Not that he's welcome here in future, but ⦔
“Best for Anne, aye. Best for us,” Mr. Beauman concurred.
Â
They rode in an open carriage, to outward appearances a dumb show of three gentlemen of like minds, cracking japes and laughing together in public before the startled eyes of the quality who had business about the town. They dined at the Frenchman's, shared some wine, and saw Alan into a boat out to his ship, waving goodbye chearly with bonhomie plastered on their phyzes like a painted chorus seeing off a hero in some drama. But it was very final sort of good-bye.
Alan gained the deck, took his salute, and went aft where the captain was lazing about under the quarterdeck awnings, slung in a net hammock of island manufacture, with one of the half grown kittens in his lap.
“Come aboard to join, have you, Mister Lewrie?” Lilycrop asked with a droll expression as he walked up and saluted him.
“Sir?”
“We've seen so little of you,” Lilycrop teased as he dandled a black-and-white tom-kitten. “Wasn't sure if you'd jumped ship or been transferred.”
“Sorry, sir, but there were some ⦠personal problems ashore.”
“Woman trouble, I heard. Finished, is it?”
“Finished, sir. Yes, woman trouble. A devilish power of 'em.”
“A day'r two of pushin' does for most of us, you know.” Lilycrop smirked. “No need to make a meal of the doxies. Saves you from angry daddies an' husbands, too.”
“Aye, sir, I shall remember that from now on.”
“God knows, they're mostly only good for one thing, an' you may rent that,” Lilycrop went on. “Give 'em guineas enough an' they'll be fond of you for as long as you want, then take your leave before they turn boresome. They've no conversation worth mentionin', so why go all cunt-struck by some mort who'll most like put horns on you the minute you're out of sight?”
“Surely not all women, sir,” Alan sighed, about as deep into the Blue Devils as a young man could be over a girl.
“Aye, there may be a gem somewhere, but the likes of me never could afford 'em or run in the right circles to find 'em. No loss at this stage of the game. So you're back with us for a while? The delights of Kingston have lost their luster, I take it?”
“Aye, sir. I could use a few months at sea. God help me, I never thought I'd say this, but is there any way we could sail, sir? I stay out of trouble at sea, mostly.” Alan groaned with a heartfelt ache of desire to escape into Duty, to lose his crushed hopes in a long spell of seamanship and possible action.
“Well, top up your wine cellars, Mister Lewrie!” Lilycrop said with a bright smile, rolling out of his hammock and handing Lewrie the kitten as he adjusted his uniform. “Admiral Sir Bloody Joshua Rowley remembered we're in his bloody squadron after all. Had you been around, and had an ear cocked like a real first officer, you'd've heard of it before. We have orders to head for Cuba, to harry coastal shippin'. Let us go aft and I'll show you the orders. Then you can indulge another form of lust, on our good King's enemies.”
“Thank bloody Christ, sir.”
“Don't forget to have the purser obtain a barrel of dried meat for the kitties, and you'll not forget the beach sand, hey?”
“Aye aye, sir.”
T
hey spotted her at first light rounding Cabo Cruz, a fine ketch of what looked to be about eighty tons burthen. Lilycrop thought she was on passage from Santiago de Cuba to Cienfuegos, and had taken the pass outside the chain of islets and reefs of the Gulf of Guacanayabo, a safer voyage most of the time, but for this instance.
She was a little ahead of them, too far out to sea to scurry inshore for safety, a little too far west to turn back for Santiago de Cuba. And with
Shrike's
shallow draft, even shoal water would offer no safety from them.
“Hands to the braces, Mister Lewrie!” Lilycrop snapped. “Give us a point closer to the wind and we'll head-reach the bitch!”
“Aye aye, sir! Hands to the braces, ready to haul taut!”
Grunting and straining near to rupturing themselves, the hands flung themselves on the braces to angle the yards of the square-sails, the set of the fore-and-aft stays'ls, jibs and spanker to work the ship as close to the wind as she would bear, to race as close inshore of the enemy vessel as they could, denying her the chance to round up or tack once north of Cabo Cruz to shelter.
“Helm down a point, quartermaster,” Lilycrop demanded. “Mister Caldwell, what say your charts?”
“Deep water all the way, sir,” Caldwell finally announced, just before Lilycrop turned on him. “With this wind outa the east'nor'east, neither us or her'll make it into shoal water.”
“Unless she tacks, sir,” Alan cautioned.
“And if the bitch tacks, we'll be gunnel to gunnel with her before she can say âMadre de Dios'!” the captain laughed.
Shrike
was indeed the butcher bird, rapaciously hungry, and her prey displayed on thorns was Spanish coastal shipping.
There were so many ships, so little time, and Lilycrop seemed determined to make the most of any opportunity, very unlike the first image Alan had formed of him and his ambitions. Now the ship's log read like an adventure novel of ships pursued, ships taken as prize, or ships burned to the waterline to deny the enemy their use. Admittedly, the number burned greatly exceeded the number sent off in the general direction of Jamaica, but that was not their fault. The roads inland on Cuba, on the west coast of Spanish Florida, were abysmal, and everything went by sea, mostly in small locally built luggers, cutters, ketches and schooners, with only a rare brig, snow or hermaphrodite brig making an appearance.
Alan had expected a cruise with little excitement. But one lovely sunset evening, they had come across a merchant schooner off Cayo Blancos on the north coast, a small ship headed for Havana, and Lilycrop had run her down before full dark. She hadn't been much, but the captain had acted as if she were an annual treasure galleon, and the ease of the capture had fired his thirst for more. If his orders were to harry coastal shipping, then harry them Lilycrop would, but suddenly following orders could be profitable.
There were no despatches to run, no schedule to keep, and Lilycrop slowly had discovered the joys of an independent, roving commission for the first time in his long career of being held in check as a junior officer. In their first cruise of four months, extending their time at sea by living off their prizes' supplies, they had taken four decent ships, and burned nearly a score more. Small traders, fishing boats, anything afloat no matter how lowly had fallen victim to their guns, and the crews allowed to row ashore as their livelihoods burned like signal fusees.
Like Alan's first piratical cruise aboard
Desperate
, the only limiting factor was warm bodies to work the ship. Once enough men were told off as prize crews and sent away,
Shrike
had to return to port. It had happened once before, and now, only two months into their second cruise, it was about to happen again, if the ketch proved worthwhile.
Alan already had a revised watch and quarter bill in his coat pocket for just this eventuality, and his only concern at the moment was just how many extra hands the ketch would take from him.
“He's crackin' on more sail, damn his blood,” Lilycrop noted.
“Don't think it'll do him much good, sir,” Alan commented,
eyeing the enemy through his new telescope. “He's hoisting his stays'ls. That'll push him down off the wind more than if he'd stayed with the fore'n'aft sails. And push his bows down maybe a foot. That'll slow him down.”
Minutes passed as the Spanish ketch, now trying to emulate some sort of square-rigger, held her slight advantage, though
Shrike
was making better way to windward.
“We're makin' too much heel, sir,” Lilycrop spat, impatient to be upon their prize. “Not good with a flat run keel.”
“Run out the starboard battery, sir,” Alan suggested immediately, “and I'd take a reef in our main tops'l. We're canceling out the lift on the bows from the fore course and tops'l.”
“Make it so, Mister Lewrie.” Lilycrop nodded in agreement.
“Bosun, and mast captain! Lay up and trice out! First reef in the main tops'l! Mister Cox, run out the starboard battery!” Alan roared through his brass speaking trumpet, and he could not help feeling pleased with himself. When they anchored at Kingston the first time in early May, he was still uncomfortable and daunted by his lack of experience, but now by mid-December 1782, such decisions had begun to come naturally to him, based on a growing wealth of knowledge about seamanship, and how Shrike reacted in particular. Lilycrop occasionally pinned his ears back for over-reaching to keep him humble, to remind him he did not yet know it all, but those admonitions were rarer.
Once adjusted properly,
Shrike
settled down on her keel a few more degrees and made the most of her longer hull form. The Spanish ketch grew in size, bringing all her hull up over the horizon as the Gulf of Guacanayabo opened out before them. Try as she might, she did not have the sail power or the length of hull to make enough speed to escape.
“Ahoy the deck, thar!” came a call from the lookout aloft. “Sail, three points off the starboard bow!”
“Rossyngton, get aloft and spy him out,” Alan barked, and the well turned out midshipman paused for a moment as he considered how dirty his white waist-coat, slop trousers and shirt were going to get from the tar and slush of the standing rigging.
“Today, Goddamn you!” Lilycrop howled.
Rossyngton was off like a shot, pausing only long enough to take a telescope with him as he scampered up the shrouds to the top and almost shinnied up to the cross-trees.
“Guarda Costa sloop, sir!” Rossyngton finally shouted down. “One-master!”
“Must have been on patrol out of Manzanillo, sir,” Alan said,
hanging from the shrouds himself for a better view. With his heavy glass, he could see a small ship, as Rossyngton described a single-masted sloop or cutter, with a large fore-and-aft gaff-rigged sail and one square-rigged tops'l above that, and a long jib-boom and bow-sprit that anchored three huge jibs. Even in the protected bay, she was hard at work off the wind, pitching noticeably.
“Fifty, sixty foot or so,” Lilycrop speculated, leaning on the starboard quarterdeck bulwarks by Lewrie's feet with his own telescope. “Maybe two heavy guns forrud, nine or twelve-pounders, and little four-pounder trash abeam. That's why she's pitchin' like that.”
“She'll interpose our course, sir, to save that ketch.”
“Damned if she will!” Lilycrop chuckled. “Mister Lewrie, beat to Quarters. We'll take her on first, then have our prize.”
Shrike did not run to a richer captain's private band replete with fifes and drums. Her single young black drummer rattled his sticks, first in a long roll, then broke into a jerky, cadenced beating of his own invention that sounded like a West Indies religious rite or revel.
“She'll try to fight us like a galley, Mister Lewrie,” Lilycrop informed him once the ship was rigged for battle with all unnecessary items stowed below (and his precious cats ensconced with Gooch in the bread rooms). “Keep her bows aimed at us to let her heavier bow guns bear.”
“We could fall off the wind, sir,” Alan suggested, scanning the tactical set-up and trying to solve the puzzle of three ships, each on its own separate course and proceeding at different speeds. “We've room enough to windward of the chase now.”
“No, she'd still get within range, or chase after us, and damme if I want my stern shot out,” Lilycrop replied. “Stand on as we are, and give her broadsides close aboard. Mister Cox, I'll want three shots every two minutes at your hottest practice, double-shotted, mind!”
“Aye aye, sir!”
“On this course, the chase'll get inshore near Santa Cruz del Sur, Captain,” Caldwell told them, waving a folded up chart at them. “There's a battery there, I'm told. About forty miles before we'd be in their range, though, sir.”
“The bitch'll never make it,” Lilycrop said confidently. And before a half-hour glass could be turned, the Spanish Guarda Costa sloop was within range of random shot, and her heavy bow chasers barked together. One shot moaned overhead and
forward of the bows to raise a large feather of spray to leeward. The other ball smacked into the sea abeam of
Shrike
, but about a quarter-cable short, and skipped once but did not reach her.
“He'll go about now, or we'll leave him behind,” Lilycrop said.
Shrike
was racing nor'nor'west, with the sloop to her right side, about a mile east of her, and about half a mile ahead, bound on a course roughly west'sou'west. She did not have the speed to pass in front to rake
Shrike
, so she would have to turn soon on a parallel course and bring her guns to action down her larboard side.
“She's leaving it a bit late if she is,” Alan observed as more minutes passed. The sloop's heavy fo'c'sle guns spoke again, this time raising splashes much closer, though once more without harm. Her bows were pitching too much for proper aim even as the range shortened.
It was a beautiful day for it, Alan noted with pleasure, unable to believe that the small sloop could be much of a menace. The sea was sparkling blue and green, azure near the eastern shore, and the hills around the small port of Niquero, and the mountains of the Sierra Maestras were a vivid, luscious green after the last heavy rains of the hurricane season, sweeping fluffy trails of cloud above them in a perfect blue sky.
“There!” Lilycrop pointed as the sloop finally foreshortened in a turn as she came almost abeam of
Shrike
's jib boom, not half a mile away now. “Mister Cox, skin the bitch!”
“Aye aye, sir!” Cox agreed joyfully. “As you bear ⦠fire!”
The small four-pounder chase gun yapped like a terrier, then the more substantial explosions of the six-pounders of the starboard battery pounded out. Caught in the act of wearing ship, controlling that huge fore-and-aft mains'l and those over-sized jibs, the broadside shook her like a shark's first bite as ball after ball hammered into her. The sloop seemed to tremble, then swung about quickly, almost pivoting on her bows as her mast, the tops'l yard, and the mains'l gaff came down in a cloud of wreckage, and the uncontrolled jibs billowed out to drag her bows back down-wind. For a second, she had heeled like a capsize.
“That's one way to gybe a ship!” Caldwell exulted.
“Bit rough on the inventory, though,” Lilycrop chuckled in appreciation. “Well done, Mister Cox! Hit her again!”
They passed her at long musket-shot, about one hundred yards, as the sloop was tugged down to them bows on, and iron
round-shot tore her to lace, flinging light scantlings into the air in a cloud, ripping her bow and fo'c'sle open.
“Luff up and hit her one last time, sir?” Alan asked, excited at how much damage they were doing.
“She's a dead 'un,” Lilycrop scowled “Let's get on to our prize. If we've a mind, we might come back for her later. She's not goin' anywhere but down-wind and out to sea, away from rescue.”
“Mister Cox, stand easy!”
“'Bout another hour to catch yon ketch, Mister Caldwell?” Lilycrop surmised with a practiced eye.
“Hour and a bit, sir,” Caldwell agreed.
“Secure from Quarters. Issue the rum and a cold dinner.”
They did catch the ketch, nearly one hour later, prowling up to her starboard side with the advantage of the wind-gauge. One ball from the larboard battery settled the matter, splashing close abeam to ricochet into her upper-works and shatter a bulwark, raising a concerted howl of terror. The ketch lowered her colors and rounded up into the wind quickly, while the howling continued.
“Jesus, what's all that noise?” Alan wondered aloud as one of the boats was led around from being towed astern to the entry port.
“I suspect yon Dago is a slaver, Mister Lewrie,” Lilycrop said sadly. “We're upwind where we can't smell her, but keep a tight hold on your dinner once you get inboard. Now, away the boardin' party before they change their feeble minds.”