Havoc`s Sword

'Don't… don't know, sir,' Desmond meekly said, with a gulp-

'I never meant t'leave your mother… leave Soft Rabbit, but,' Lewrie began, stammering a tad. 'Your father,… Desmond, 'twas him, said it would be best. That he'd see to her, after I sailed away. I was wounded. Touch and go that I'd live, for a while, there, anyway, so… it seemed best, all round. Couldn't have taken her to London, any more than Desmond could have settled her in Charleston.'

'Was she really a princess, like he said, sir?' Desmond asked, in almost a desperate pleading. 'A Cherokee princess?' Lewrie sat up with a start, smothering the wince he felt.

'A captured Cherokee princess,' he finally lied, unable to dis-abuse all the lad's callow assumptions, those sticking points to which his very self clung. 'Man-Killer, the Great Warrior of your father's White Wind clan, raided far north and took her. Brought her back for a valuable slave. Quite a coup, they thought. She wasn't visiting… the Muskogee said the T'se-luki weren't the real People, not as good as them. Couldn't even talk right, the Cherokee, they told me.'

'But they let you marry her, even so, sir?' Desmond pressed at him, snuggling Toulon to him as if for comfort. 'Being an outsider, and all, I meant. Was it…?'

'She served me supper, one night,' Lewrie told him, reminiscing almost happily, despite the awkward circumstances, 'and I was lost in a trice. Unmarried Muskogee girls may choose whom they wish, and we met later down at the lake… we talked, or tried to, and… she was so very fetching and handsome, so slim and wee, really. Very sweet and gentle a girl… and smart as paint, too, quick to learn things! Uhm…'

Randy as a stoat? Lewrie had thought; do I dare tell him that?

'Yet you never thought to write her, or look for her, once the war ended, sir? If you loved her as much as she…?'

'I'd barely made my lieutenantcy, and the Royal Navy distrusts junior officers who marry,' Lewrie extemporised, squirming in embarassment. 'We're to make Commander first, then marry some retired admiral's proper daughter. Does she come with acres attached, that's even better, d'ye see, young sir? Besides, they slung me ashore in London on half-pay, then shipped me halfway round the world to India and the Chinese coast for nigh on three years. By then, I'd met my Caroline.'

'The lady on the bulkhead, sir? She's very pretty. Do you have… children, dare I ask, sir?' Desmond shyly probed.

'Three… two boys and a daughter,' Lewrie said, crossing his fingers over how long that situation might continue. 'And a ward, to boot. A genteel French girl, well… young woman, by now, whose kin were slain at Toulon. Promised a dying French officer I knew from the Revolution that I'd see for his cousin Sophie. You'd like her I'll wager. Unless, of course, you have a special young miss dear to your heart back in Charleston?' Lewrie thought to tease, to finagle more probing, and upsetting, questions.

'Oh… none particular, yet, sir,' the lad actually blushed, before turning a touch gloomy. 'Even as a McGilliveray, d'you see… We're a long-settled and respectable family, and all, but…'

'But people still think you not quite… the ton? Because…'

The lad merely bobbed his head, as if in shame, seemingly more intent on nuzzling Toulon to his chin; which was just heavenly to the ram-cat.

'Well, damn their blue blood, I say!' Lewrie barked. 'Uhm this sudden revelation. How widespread d'ye wish it to be, among yer peers, and such? Would a British father make things worse for you or better? Pardons, but I ain't had much experience at… this. You've spent so much time a…' Lewrie flummoxed, hand waving for words.

'Bastard, sir?' the lad suddenly said, with too-candid heat.

'Well, d'ye want t'put it that way, aye,' Lewrie answered, with an embarrassed grimace. 'No harm in it, really. I'm a bastard myself.'

That snapped the lad's head up right quick!

'S'truth!' Lewrie vowed. 'Little matter of hiring a false justice, 'stead of proper clergy, when my own father, Sir Hugo St. George Willoughby, took my mother, Elisabeth Lewrie, to wife. A little jape arranged by his fellow officers in the Fourth Regiment of Foot. You know… the King's Own? The drunken lot o' sots. She died, soon as I was born, and I got lost in a parish poor house nigh a year, and was lucky to live, cruel as they care for orphan gits, 'til my father came and got me out. Here, lad… does your uncle, your captain, require you back aboard any time soon, or would you care to go ashore with me and dine? I expect we've a lot of catching up to do.'

'I expect we do, sir!' the lad said, almost pathetically grateful and eager. 'And I'd… I would be greatly honoured to accept an invitation to dine with you, sir. Because…'

' 'Coz I've yet t'meet a mid who wasn't half-starved?'

'That, too, sir,' Desmond McGilliveray confessed, all smiles of a sudden. 'Er, should I call you 'sir,' or Captain Lewrie, or…?'

'Well, once you learn what a sordid family you're kin to, make up your own mind as to that,' Lewrie allowed. 'Aspinall? I'd admire did you pass the word for Cox'n Andrews, and my boat-crew. I'll dine ashore with Mister McGilliveray,' he said, springing to his feet.

'Aye aye, sir!'

'Your father's knighted, sir?' Desmond happily bubbled as they gathered hats and such. 'Is he a lord? And, your pardons, but those medals you wore at supper t'other night…!'

'No, he ain't,' Lewrie gleefully related. 'He was knighted for bravery. A Major-General, now, though mostly retired on his estate. Nothing much, really, nothing grand. This'un's for Saint Vincent… we were in shoutin' distance of Captain Nelson, at that'un. And this'un's for Camperdown, when we trounced the Dutch, under Duncan the wild Scot. Oh, he's a tall, craggy figure, white hair stickin' up six ways from Sunday…!'

'And you wear a hanger, instead of a smallsword?'

'Best for boarding-party brawls, don't ye know! Cut and slash, as well as skewer, and short enough to whip about when it's shoulder-to-shoulder… Desmond.'

To which use of his Christian name, the lad beamed so widely his face threatened to split in half, as Lewrie laid a tentative, claiming, hand atop his shoulder lightly-ostensibly to steer him ahead of him on the way out past the Marine sentry to the gun-deck.

And God help us, the both of us, Lewrie had thought.

'Signal from the Sumter, sir,' Midshipman Grace sang out as the bunting soared aloft from the man o' war abeam of them and alee, making Lewrie shift his telescope aft towards her mizen-mast, where the powerful day-glass forced him to scan the signal flags top-to-bottom one at a time. 'She sends 'Farewell and Adieu', sir… her second hoist is… 'Haul Wind'… for 'Am Hauling Wind,' I'd suppose?'

'Does she propose to order a Royal Navy frigate to escort her to Dominica, that's another matter,' Lewrie heard Lt. Catterall gravel.

'Spell out 'Best of Fortune' to her, best you may, lad,' Lewrie told Grace. 'Mister Windwood?'

'Aye, sir?' the Sailing Master answered, stepping closer.

'We've enough sea-room to come about and run betwixt Guadeloupe and Montserrat, Mister Winwood?' Lewrie asked him.

'More than sufficient, Captain,' Winwood soberly assured him.

'Very well, sir, and thankee,' Lewrie replied. 'We'll let the Sumter haul off well alee before we come about ourselves.'

Thomas Sumter would be taking the 'outside passage' to windward of Guadeloupe, that scorpions' nest, for her base in Prince Rupert Bay on Dominica, heavily laden with fresh-slaughtered and salted beef and pork, with her decks also burdened by meat on the hoof to victual any arriving American warships. Even so burdened, however she would leap at the chance to engage any French she encountered, Capt. McGilliveray had assured in his letter's final pages.

As for HMS Proteus, well… Mr. Peel was miffed anew by what Lewrie had planned to do. When not at logger-heads concerning how the distant Mr. Pelham had instructed them to operate, Peel was turning out to be a rather amiable companion, and God knew that any captain needed some personal contact and conversation, besides cats, dogs, geese, and chickens… or himself… to ease the mute loneliness of command but… Lewrie suspected that Mr. James Peel would ever be on the qui-vive for his… inspired moments, waiting for a heavy shoe to drop.