King, Ship, and Sword

study.

'Captain Lewrie? Is Captain Lewrie present?' a minor clerk enquired from the foot of the grand staircase.

'Here,' Lewrie answered, springing from the pew bench, giving the officer not another thought as he followed the young clerk abovestairs with his bound-together stack of books and papers.

A pleasant ten-minute chat with Mr. Marsden, then Lewrie was passed on to a succession of underlings, from one cramped office to another, even right down to the damp basements where clerks would work on stools and makeshift plank passageways when the Thames flooded in Spring; to file his navigational observations, to hand over ledgers and charts, the final muster book to make official those crewmembers Discharged, Dead, or so injured that they were merely Discharged, and for what reason. Finally, long past his usual dinner hour, Lewrie saw the Councillor of the Cheque, where his final accounting was toted up, the last full-rate pay of a Post-Captain of a Fifth Rate was signed and handed over in full (an assortment of ten-, five-, and one-pound notes on the Bank of England, with only a few shillings and pence in real coin) and his whereabouts, should Admiralty have need of him, noted, thence placing him on half-pay for the near future-minus all the deductions for the aforesaid Chatham Chest and crippled pensioners, robbing him of the eight shillings per day of an active commission, reducing him to six shillings per day of half-pay, but really amounting only to a low three shillings!

By then, with the money in his pockets, and his stack of books and such much reduced, and sure that he had seen almost all thirty of the employees who ran the entire Fleet, Lewrie made his adieus and trotted down the stairs to get his hat and cloak from the hall porter, looking over the Waiting Room in hopes he might espy at least one old shipmate before departing, someone who'd shared privations, dangers, and high cockalorums, if only to stave off the dread that there would be exceedingly dull times ahead, on his own, without such companionable 'sheet anchors' linked to the bulk of his adult life.

One'd think so, Lewrie thought as he took his time buckling on his sword belt, settling the heavy and enveloping boat-cloak upon his shoulders; an hundred ships o'the line, an hundred frigates, sloops o'war, and brig-sloops… less'n a thousand active Post-Captains, Commanders, not ten thousand Lieutenants… ye'd think I'd know one of 'em in here!

Well, there were some he'd rather not encounter, this side of the gates of Hell; Francis Forrester, who'd made Post years before he had, the idle, well-connected bastard; that idle 'grand tourist' Commander William Fillebrowne; that Captain Blaylock of the rosaceaed phyz back in the West Indies… Come to think on't, there were rather more than a few fellow Commission Sea Officers listed in Steel's Original and Correct List of the Royal Navy who'd be more than happy to play-act the 'Merry Andrew,' glad-hand him, then spit in his tea on the sly, or worse!

There was the drooling, drizzling Midshipman; there was that gloomy, tall, and skeletal dark-haired Lieutenant, now taken to wringing his hands, and there were an hundred strangers. Fie on it!

Lewrie clapped his cocked hat on his head and left, going out to the courtyard, feeling as he imagined an aging foxhound would when left in the run and pen whilst the younger, spryer dogs set out for a hunt… to be idly, lubberly, civilian-useless!

'An' there's a proper sea-dog for ye, young ginn'l'men. Merry Christmas t'ye, Cap'um,' the old tiler bade him, doffing his own hat and making a clutch of Midshipmen round the tea cart turn to gawk and grin in polite confusion. 'Merry Christmas, an' a Happy New Year!'

Christ, will he never retire? Lewrie wondered; or just drop the Hell dead? He's been doorman here since I paid off the Shrike brig in '83.

'And a Merry Christmas t'you,' Lewrie answered back, with a doff of his own hat to the old fart, then in responding salute to the Mids as he trudged past for the curtain wall and the street beyond, looking for a hired carriage to bear him to the Strand, his last-minute holiday shopping, and an excellent, but late, dinner at a chop- house in Savoy Street, one introduced to him by his barrister during his legal troubles. Bad memories or not, their victuals were marvellous!

Well, after his dinner, before shopping, he would have to drop by Coutts' Bank to deposit his accumulated earnings, then call on his solicitor, Mr. Matthew Mountjoy, to settle his shore debts with notes-of-hand. Then, the day after…?

There would be no more reason to put off going home… home to Anglesgreen and the dubious welcome of his wife and dour, disapproving in-laws, all of whom held him in as much regard as a sack of dead barn rats! Lewrie would have thought 'a sack of sheep-shit,' but… sheep-shit was worth something, as fertiliser!

CHAPTER EIGHT

It was a long, slow, and muddy road from London through Guildford and on 'sutherly' towards Portsmouth, before taking the turning to the Petersfield road. It was cold enough for the ruts to freeze in the nights, then turn to brittle slush by mid-day; to lean out of a coach window was a good way to have one's face slimed by the shower of wet slop thrown up by the coach's front wheels.

The sky was completely overcast, the clouds low, and the winds held a hint of snow in the offing. Indeed, it had snowed sometime in the past two days, for the trees-the poor, bare trees-along the way cupped it in the fork of their branches, and the piles of leaves on the ground were half-smothered in white, as were the fallow pastures and fields last plowed into furrows in Spring. All the crops were harvested, now, the last good from them raked and reaped and gleaned, with only a hayrick here and there, topped with scrap tarpaulin to keep off the wet.

Most of the feed livestock, Lewrie knew, would have been slaughtered by now, too-the beef, mutton, and pork salted, smoked, sugar-cured, or submerged in the large stone crocks filled with preserving lard. It was only the young and breeding beasts that remained in the pastures by the road, in the styes or pens within sight from the rumbling, jouncing coach, and the dray waggon that followed.

'Fair lotta sheep, hereabout, ain't they, sor?' Liam Desmond enquired with a quirky uplift of one corner of his mouth.

'Thousands 'pon thousands of 'em,' Lewrie told him. 'The comin' thing in the North Downs, since before the American Revolution. We've about two hundred, last time I got an accounting.'

'Nothin' like good roast lamb, sor, sure there ain't,' Desmond said with a chuckle. Liam Desmond no longer was garbed in a sailor's 'short clothing' but wore dark brown 'ditto,' his coat and trousers of the same coloured broadcloth. He sported a buff-coloured waist-coat, a white linen shirt, even a white neck-stock, and, with triple- caped overcoat and a grey farmer's hat, could almost be mistaken for a man of the squirearchy… one who rented his acres, not owned them, at least.

'You'll founder on lamb and mutton by Easter,' Lewrie said with a wry laugh, for by previous experience, in the country, he'd seen that particular dish on his table rather more than thrice a week. In spite of the risk to his complexion, Lewrie let down the window glass and took a quick peek 'astern' to see how Patrick Furfy was doing with the dray waggon. Furfy and the waggoner, swathed to their eyebrows with upturned overcoat collars, wool scarves, and tugged-down hats, seemed to be having a grand natter, and he caught the tail-end of a joke that Furfy was telling, and his deep, hearty roar of laughter at its successful completion. Patrick Furfy loved a good joke or yarn but had a hard time relating them onwards, leaving out details that he had to jab in in the middle, and overall had but a limited stash of jokes he could reliably tell.

'… loight th' candle, help me foind me bliddy equipage, an' we'll coach outta this bitch's quim, har har!'

'That'd be Number Twenty-One, sor,' Desmond said with a grin, 'and I thought he'd nivver git it right.' He tugged uncomfortably at his neck-stock and the enveloping folds of his overcoat, not used to such perhaps in his whole life in Ireland, then the Navy.

'Where the Hell did that come from?' Lewrie gravelled as their coach came even with a field that Lewrie recalled as a thinned-out wood lot, bounded by a low hand-laid stone wall. Now, the wood lot was taken over by several new buildings, a brick-works, and a wide gate open in the wall. About an eighth of a mile later, past a stretch of woods, and there was a tannery, thankfully down-stream from Anglesgreen.