Havoc`s Sword

That went down well; every American at the table got a wolfish, speculative expression at that suggestion. Promotion, glory, and honour for themselves, their new nation, and navy; a feat which would ensure a permanent U.S. Navy, never again to be laid up or sold off, once their 'emergency measures' were no longer necessary.

Lewrie took a peek cross the table to Peel, who was thin-lipped and flint-eyed at how much Lewrie had revealed, at how blatantly he had tossed the bait in their direction. Their eyes met, and Peel's mouth quirked a touch, though he did incline his head in mute, and grudging, agreement. Perhaps he would have brought Choundas's name up much more subtly, but… it was done, and no real harm had resulted. Yet. 'And you, Mister Peel?' Lt. Claiborne, Sumter's First Officer, enquired. 'You look like a travellin' man, so weathered, an' all. Are you Royal Navy, too? I'd expect you have a favourite cuisine as well.'

'Uhm, I am…' Peel began, flummoxing in search of a bona fide, of a sudden, '… Spain, Portugal, and the Mediterranean region, mostly. I represent Coutts' Bank in London, so I do get about somewhat!'

'Old family friend of my wife's British relations, sir,' Lewrie lied, coveririg for him. 'I bank with Coutts', so when James wrote he was being sent out to search for suitable acreage for a bank's client, I offered him passage to Antigua from Kingston. Safer passage than he could expect aboard a civilian packet. My wife, by the by, originally came from the Cape Fear country in North Carolina. Upriver, near Cross Creek and Campbelltown… the Scots' settlements. We first met during the last war, in Wilmington.'

Why, that was right up the coast! Why, that almost made her a Scot herself, and had he ever heard the tale of Flora MacDonald mistress of Bonnie Prince Charlie, who'd landed at Wilmington and married a local, who'd raised a Tory Highland regiment… unfortunately defeated at Widow Moore's Creek bridge, just outside Wilmington, but…!

A Chiswick, was she, why Captain McGilliveray had known of them, had met a Sewallis Chiswick before 'the unpleasantness'… I

'My late father-in-law, sir, and the namesake of my eldest son!' Lewrie happily exclaimed. 'I served with Caroline's brothers, Burgess and Governour Chiswick, quite incidentally really, at Yorktown. Rifle regiment. One of ours, actually, but…'

'Why, I do b'lieve I was introduced to them, too, must've been in '74 or '75, just before…' Capt. McGilliveray gleefully said. He was a Carolinian, from a distinctive region of the United States, one thinly populated compared to the northern states. And he was a Scot, a Celt, and vitally enthralled, as all 'Southerners' were, by family lineages, what Caroline had once said was a parlour game more popular than Blind-Man's Buff or cards, what she'd termed 'Who's Your People?'

'Just lads they were then,' Capt. McGilliveray recalled with a smile, 'But likely lookin'. Dash it, I even think I remember a young girl, quite the sweet miss, with 'em. Blond hair, and the merriest eyes…?'

'That surely was my Caroline, sir,' Lewrie agreed.

'So all the Chiswicks are in England now?' McGilliveray asked.

'No, sir. Just her immediate family. One branch remained, and still farm in the Cape Fear. Some Chiswicks, and most of her former kin, the McDaniels, who supported independence,' Lewrie had to say.

'Ah, we lost so many good friends an' neighbours,' McGilliveray said, sighing. 'When there was no need for 'em t'eut an' run. We'd of put all the bitterness b'hind us by now.'

Not if you burned each other out and murdered your own cousins, Lewrie sourly thought, careful to keep a neutral expression, as he remembered how Caroline and her family had come as refugees to Wilmington in rags and tears of betrayal.

'Now, as I recall Mister Seabright tellin' me once he returned from bearin' my invitation, Captain Lewrie,' McGilliveray went on, in a playful mood, 'did you not tell him that you had met a McGilliveray some time or other?'

'Forget his Christian name, sorry t'say,' Lewrie replied, 'but there was a young man name of McGilliveray with whom I served for a few weeks, in '82, just after I gained my commission. He had been London-educated… came out from England with an older fellow who wished to try and influence the Muskogee Indians. Your pardons, Captain, but as I recall, this particular McGilliveray or some of his kin were in the 'over- mountain' trade with the Indian tribes, and he was of… partial Indian blood,' Lewrie stated with a hapless moue of chagrin, unsure of how tales of White-Indian unions went down with touchy Americans from the South, and with Capt. McGilliveray in particular. Had his kinsman been a black sheep, a 'Remittance Man,' or a stain on their escutcheon? Was Indian blood as shameful as a White-Negro blend seemed to be?

'We tried to get the Muskogee and Seminolee to side with us, to take on the Spanish,' Lewrie further said with another apologetic shrug. 'S'pose that made him a Tory, to you all. From Charleston, he said.'

And let's not tell 'em the plan was t'turn the Indians loose on Rebel settlers, and drive 'em into the sea! Lewrie thought; Devil take the hindmost, and the scalps.

'My uncle Robert's son, my cousin Desmond,' Capt. McGilliveray said primly, almost sadly, all joy of comparing heritage quite dashed. 'Worst thing the fam'ly ever did, sendin' some of us to England t'make Cambridge scholars. Turned Desmond's head round, sorry t say.

'My abject pardons for broaching the subject, sir!' Lewrie said, much abashed. 'Though I'm told that even your great Benjamin Franklin and his son took opposing tacks during the Revolution. I did not-'

'Oh, 'tis long done with, Captain Lewrie,' McGilliveray allowed, 'and Desmond's been dead and gone, these past twelve years.' He tried to placate, but only came off grumpier, more uneasy, than anything else. 'Half the families in America had a Tory-Rebel altercation, if you look close. Once the war was over, though, Desmond did come home and we reconciled our diff'rences. My brothers and I inherited the city firm and the sea trade, whilst Desmond managed the hide and fur trade among the Indians. Here, sir! You actually went among the Muskogee when he did, or merely-'

'Aye, Captain McGilliveray,' Lewrie replied, just about to preen a bit more and tell them another tale of derring-do, and proper modesty bedamned. 'Escorted him inshore, then up the Apalachicola River in our ship's boats, then overland to a Muskogee town, the name escapes me, by a large lake. Me, him, a company of fusiliers, and a Foreign Office-'

'You knew my father, sir?' Midshipman McGilliveray blurted from the foot of the table, startling them all to an uneasy silence.

Lewrie turned to look at him. The lad was gape-mouthed in astonishment and sudden pleasure, the 'stain' on the McGilliveray escutcheon best left unsaid or not. Lewrie suspected that the poor lad had never been told very much about his 'half-breed' sire, who had served against his own kin during the Revolution, to boot, despite his uncle's declaration that they'd reconciled and put the rift behind them.

'Indeed I did, young sir,' Lewrie told him. 'And a formidable fellow he was, too. Brave, alert, and clever… skilled in the lore of the forest, and the nicest manners of the drawing room. At home in a chickee or a mansion. A bold horseman, a skilled hunter…'

The simple use of a long-forgotten Indian word for 'hut' seemed to please the midshipman no end, for he beamed wider, expectantly, as if starved for information long denied him.

'Of the White Turtle Clan, I recall,' Lewrie further reminisced. 'Or was it the Wind Clan, on his mother's side? Muskogee royally, as it were, in any event. He stood high in their councils, with their… uhm, mikkos and their… talwas! Their ministers and chiefs, as grand as a peer in the House of Lords,' Lewrie told him, the terms springing to the forefront of his memory after all those years. 'At his urging I ended up anhissi, myself, toward the end…'

'Made 'of their fire,' ' young McGilliveray exclaimed with growing excitement, 'to my grandmother's huti. A grand honour, is it not, uncle? Captain, sorry.' Young Desmond reddened.

'It was, indeed, Mister McGilliveray,' his uncle gravely said.

'And… and were you there, then, Captain Lewrie?' Midshipman McGilliveray hesitantly pressed, his curiosity getting the better of him, and to the great astonishment of Midshipman Grace seated beside him, who had never heard the like back in staid old England. 'Then you must have met my mother. They were married, grandfather Robbie always told me, on that trip. You must have seen her!'

'Ah…?' Lewrie hedged, trying not to gawp. The boy's father, he sourly recalled, had been the hugest sort of prig, and he doubted that Cambridge had had a thing to do with it. Desmond McGilliveray, as he knew him, had ranted like a Baptist hedge-priest against fornication 'twixt the English