Havoc`s Sword

soft, civilian mattress. A hand was pent in indecision above the hero, as he pondered laying hands on a gentleman… or dashing a ladle of cool water from the laving bowl on his head, then run and blame it on a house-servant!

'But…!' Captain Alan Lewrie, RN, commanding officer of HMS Proteus, Fifth Rate frigate, managed in reply, heavily smacking his lips and creaking one eye open to peruse the ceiling, one which he did not in any wise recognise. Too many damn' cherubs, and such!

'G'mornin', sah,' Andrews said.

'Aarrr…' Lewrie commented. It had been such a vivid dream, one which might have been mere seconds from revealing or concluding or fulfilling… something. Whatever it had been, it had left him with a cock-stand worthy of a marlingspike. 'Time, is it?'

'Aye, sah,' Andrews replied, stepping away from the bed. 'Dey be coffee belowstairs, black an' hot, Cap'm. Mistah Cashman, he's up already, an' 'is coachman's gettin' de 'quipage hitched.'

'Right, then,' Lewrie said with a sigh and a yawn, chiding himself for sharing that third bottle of wine with his host, 'Kit,' after supper. He should have known better, should have kept a soberer head, and…

Damn that ceiling,' Lewrie thought, scowling as he sat up in bed: Eros and arrows, bare-titted shepherd girls, and clouds… thought I was gone over to Heaven for a second or two!

He flung back the single sheet that covered him, swung his legs out to plant his bare feet on the naked wood floor… swayed a bit as the last of the wine fumes rose with him, and belched.

'Bloody hell,' he gravelled, massaging his eyes with the heels of his palms. 'Why can't people shoot each other at reasonable hours? Is it light yet, Andrews?'

'Just a tad o' false dawn, sah,' Andrews said from the bureau, where he was brushing Lewrie's dress coat. Sure enough, the scene in the tall French doors leading to the upper balcony was night-dark with only a hint of darker trees swaying against skies just barely brushed with grey. 'Touch o' fog'r mist, too, sah,' Andrews said, frowning.

'Ummph,' Lewrie commented, bracing his hands on the bed to get himself upright. With one eye still shut and the other squinted, he shambled to the wash-hand stand and laving bowl, to the ewer full of cool well-water, 'coz God, was he thirsty!

'Mind d'ose…' Andrews cautioned, too late.

'Oww! Shit-fire! Mmmm! Dammit t' hell!'

He'd stubbed his toes on a dark leather chest, just one of many in the room, as Kit Cashman packed up his household for his removal from Jamaica in the next few weeks.

Two tumblers of water, a quick slosh and scrub on his face and neck, a cursory sponge-down against the humid cool of a tropic morning, and he was primed to part the flaps of his thin cotton underdrawers for a long 'tinkle' into the night-jar. Feeling some more human, at last, he sat on a spindly side-chair to don his white silk hose and bind them behind his knees, pull on a fresh pair of light sailcloth breeches, and slip into his new-blacked Hessian boots. Andrews stood by patiently, offering him a clean silk shirt with a moderately ruffled breast inset and cuffs, helped him bind on his neck-stock, then held out a cotton waist- coat so he could slip into it. His slim sword baldric looped atop that, from right shoulder to left hip, with a gleaming oval brass breastplate at the centre of his chest. Then came the kerseymere wool coat, the full-dress version with the gilt-lace buttonholes, buttons and pocket detailings, and the single fringed gold epaulet of a captain of less than three years' seniority that rode on his right shoulder.

Lewrie turned to the mirror above the wash-hand stand, to drag both hands through his hair to 'Welsh' comb it with his fingers; back above his ears on the sides, where thick and slightly wiry hair of mid-brown, almost light- brown, and further gilt by harsh sunlight off seas innumerable by then, curled over ears and temples almost like the bust of a long-gone Roman, gathered in a fashionable swirl low on his forehead. Andrew plucked at his collar to tug his short, spriggish queue of hair to lie outside the tall-collared coat and fiddled with the narrow band and bow of black silk which bound it.

Lewrie had shaved the morning before, so that wouldn't delay him. He rubbed his stubble, adjudging his 'phyz.' Firm skin, a lean face, a long-passage sailor's permanent tan… the upright puckered line of a sword-cut on his left cheek, from a foolish duel of his own long ago. Permanent squint-lines round his eyes, now, though merry-lookin'…? Frown lines, or grin lines at the corners of his mouth… and eyes of startling colour, light grey or blue, by temper. They looked a trifle grey, this bloody pre- morning… and a touch of 'bleary' and red-shot, too, he speculated. But, altogether, not a bad phyz.

'Yah hat, sah,' Andrews said, handing him the best one from a thin wooden box, Gilt cords and tassels just so, cockade and the dog-vane, loop, and button gleaming, the gold lacing round the edges bright and buttery-yellow, instead of verdigrised by sea-air like his oldest one.

'Well, then… coffee, didje say?'

Blam! From the lower porch, the front veranda, a pistol firing as loud and terrier- bark-sharp as a four-pounder, making them both jump!

'Bloody man!' Lewrie snapped, reclaiming his calm. 'What need of more practice? Went through a pound o' powder, yesterday and last night! Tell cook I'll want some toast and jam with my coffee, too.'

'Aye, sah,' Andrews replied as Lewrie strode to the door, with at least the outward appearance of firm-minded purpose, and sober control of himself. At least he avoided the various boxes and chests. Blam! 'That'd be de lef hand, I reckon,' Andrews muttered.

'Morning, Nimrod,' Lewrie bade his host, standing bare-headed by a whitewashed column on the veranda, balancing cup and saucer, and savouring his second refill of coffee, heavily laced with local-made brown sugar, and thick cream fresh-stripped from the teat. The smell of burned gunpowder lay heavy on the air, and a small cumulus cloud of nitres and exploded sulfurs mingled with the predawn fog.

'Ah, good morning, Alan me old,' Lieutenant-Colonel Christopher Cashman answered right gaily for such an ungodly hour, turning to face him as his man-servant quickly reloaded the pair of duelling pistols. A scarecrow figure of straw stuffed into white nankeen slop-trousers and loose shirt, already holed with long practice, stood beyond the shell-and-sand drive, the requisite fifteen paces from Cashman's line in the sand, and the rickety folding field- table that bore his arsenal.

'Sleep well?' Lewrie enquired as he lifted a thick slice of hot, toasted bread, slathered with fresh butter and mango jam, to his lips.

'As peaceful, and as undisturbed, as a babe,' Cashman boasted, with a chuckle and a wide grin, and Lewrie had to admit that he seemed in fine fettle, clear-eyed and 'tail's-up' with gleeful anticipation, not dread, of facing another man's levelled pistol not an hour hence. 'Not Nimrod, though… that's huntin'. Nay, rather I fancy meself an Achilles this mornin'. Ready to slay my Hector and be done.'

He was dressed for it, of a certainty, with the care and forethought required of a man who'd shortly 'blaze.' Silk shirts were de rigueur, more easily drawn, in whole patches, from bullet wounds. Kit wore white cotton breeches, freshly boiled in lye soap, thoroughly rinsed in clean well-water and air-dried on a line strung on the upper balcony, above the miasmas and smuts of the daily traffic to the house, and the risk of tropical 'infusions' that came from damp soils. Tall black-and-brown-topped riding boots completed his ensemble; thick'uns, almost proof against a stray ball, or a snakebite, too.

'And I'm…?' Lewrie asked with a small, approving laugh, never the greatest of Greek scholars.

'My Ulysses, Alan… ever the crafty bastard, haha!'

'Didn't he make off with most of the loot in the end?' Lewrie wondered aloud.

'Lost it all by shipwreck, then went home to his wife, at the last,' Cashman said, picking up a newly loaded pistol and taking his stance, side-on to the target, to present the slimmest right profile to a return ball, pistol cocked and his forearm vertical, the long barrel in perfect alignment with his forearm, mortally intent…

Bloody bastard! Lewrie cringed; just had t'remind me o' bein' on the outs with the wife back home! He rather doubted that Caroline was pining away and spinning wool as faithfully as… Penelope, was it? Not that Caroline, a paragon of virtue to his 'crow-cock' Corinthian nature, would ever cuckold him… would she?