The King

a bastard after all!'

Sir Hugo reset his waist-coat, the hang of his smallsword, and thumped down the steps to the muddy yard, leaving Lewrie at a loss for words, red-faced with sudden shame.

'Sir?' Alan called out, stepping down into the mud and drizzle. 'Father?'

Sir Hugo halted and turned around, squelching mud on his boots.

'Yes?' he snapped.

'I'm sorry. I didn't know,' Alan admitted. 'I didn't even know there was anything you really cared about. Except for money and quim.'

'Well, they still rate pretty high on my list of favorites,' Sir Hugo confessed. 'Doing what I'm best at, horrible as it can be, is on that list, too, you know.'

'I most heartily apologize, Father.'

'Apology accepted. Son. To be expected, I suppose. You know very little about me. Part of that's my fault. Come to my quarters.'

'You haven't brought your band with you, have you?' Alan smiled.

'No, and the girls are in someone else's bibikhana now. Still, I never travel without a decent wine cellar. There's some claret you might appreciate.' Sir Hugo laughed.

'I'd admire that, thankee… Father.'

'You know,' Sir Hugo commented as they trudged across the muddy maidan of die military cantonment, 'I don't half trust your man Twigg.'

'I've yet to know what to make of him, yes.'

'What bothered me most was what you said about scouting out the islands we're to capture. He sounded more eager to get his precious goods back to Calcutta. First ship in would reap a fortune. Fortune to fund your expedition out here, yes. And fortune enough to line the pockets of a palatikal with what's left over.'

'He knew!' Alan spat out. 'That's what surprised me. Right after we sank La Malouine, he knew. By that morning at the latest. And yet he kept it to himself, told no one, didn't suggest we look in on the Spratlys. If that taifun hadn't forced us down here to Bencoolen for shelter, I expect we'd be halfway up the Malacca Straits by now, your battalion be damned, and he'd sit on his news until we'd crossed the Hooghly Bar. Probably wanted something to impress Warren Hastings with.'

'Ah, well he'd better be quick about it, then. Hastings is under a cloud. There's talk from home of him sailing for England to face impeachment charges with 'John Company.' Might have someone new in the Bengal Presidency soon.'

'Someone who doesn't know a bloody thing about our mission?'

'That could make things very interesting.' Sir Hugo frowned. 'Damme, here come the bloody rains again! I assume a sailor can run? Run or get soaked.'

'This sailor can,' Alan said, matching the older man's stride easily.

'One thing to expect,' Sir Hugo puffed.

'What?'

'Twigg probably cares for you now… as much as cold, boiled mutton,' Sir Hugo replied between breaths. 'Look for a spell of the dirty.'

Chapter 4

It didn't seem like a spell of the dirty, even if Twigg had a hand in influencing the captain's decision.

Ayscough had explained it to him. Lieutenant Choate, as first officer and his most reliable man, would be the one first in line to take the job, normally, but he would be needed to take command of whichever suitable vessel they hired in Calcutta while Telesto was refitting.

To fill his vacancy, he had to draw upon his next-most experienced and skilled officer, Lieutenant Percival, to remain aboard Telesto to advance to first officer in Choate's absence. Lieutenant McTaggart had to remain aboard Telesto, at least to Calcutta, and go as first officer for Choate in his new captaincy.

Captain Ayscough could advance the midshipmen-in-disguise now serving as master's mates to Mr. Brainard into acting lieutenants, but they would be slender reeds upon which to depend to command the escort north with Lady Charlotte.

'As I said in my journal about this matter, Mister Lewrie,' the captain had told him, 'that leaves only you, but you have shewn yourself to be more than reliable, competent and daring, but not too daring. I also made note that you only of the remaining commission officers, had, no matter your lack of seniority, commanded a King's ship even briefly. The chore is fairly simple, if you do not exceed your brief and go off chasing pirates too rashly. If they don't kill you, then I shall.'

Lewrie got command of Culverin.

She had started life in 1778 as a bomb-ketch, laid down in Calcutta once the last war had spread from the Colonies to a world-wide conflagration against the Spanish, the Dutch and the French. To be a bomb-ketch, she had to be solid and heavy enough to absorb the kick of two twelve-inch mortars firing at high angle, so she was made of teak, as overbuilt as a 1st Rate line-of-battle ship, though her sides did not need to be as thick. She would never have been required to stand in the line of battle, anyway. She was further stiffened with riders that were scarfed from her frames as cross-members, to the keelson up to the deck beams, making her interior a maze totally unsuitable for large cargoes, with much of her centerline length taken up below deck as magazine and shot racks for her former weapons.

The huge mortars were gone, though the wells where they had sat remained, one forward of her main-mast, and one forward of her shorter mizzenmast. Culverin had been sold out of naval service once the war in the Far East had ended in 1783. Bombs were too easily replaced if war broke out again, the Admiralty decried the expense of maintaining many of them in-ordinary and their usefulness was limited to those occasions where high-angle explosive shells needed to be hurled into harbors and fortifications along a hostile coast.

She would have seemed like the perfect answer to an enterprising captain for coastal trading. About ninety feet on the range of the deck, roughly the length of a trading brig, about twenty-six feet in beam, and shoal-drafted to let her get within firing range of coastal forts. Her rig was only two masts instead of three, making for less crew, and ketches sported large gaff-rigged fore-and-aft sails on the rear of her masts, making sailing, tacking and wearing ship even simpler.

All of which-her ease and cheapness of operation, rigidity and stout construction, and shallow draft-had convinced young Captain Dover to buy her and put her to work on the Bencoolen-Calcutta run, contracted to service the needs of that fearsome settlement, with the occasional jaunt to Macao running opium lurking somewhere in the back of his mind as well.

The only trouble was that she was not particularly weath-erly; even with fore-and-aft sails she could not go close-hauled against the wind. She could point closer to the wind, yes, but her shallow draft made her slip to leeward too much, unlike a deeper-bellied ship with more grip below the waterline. And then, there were those riders in her innards, that limited the amount of cargo she could carry. They could not be removed without dismantling Culverin completely, bolted as they were from the outside of her hull, right through planking, her beams and frames, keelson and futtocks. But at four thousand pounds sterling, she had seemed a bargain, so he had bought her, and had been losing money on the deal ever since, scrimp as he might to make her pay.

Which was why Captain Dover had leaped at that chance not simply to hire her out, but sell her outright, even if Twigg had only offered three thousand pounds. Neither was the enterprising Captain Dover quite so enterprising or ambitious as to remain aboard as part of the venture, so he took passage for Calcutta aboard Telesto, along with his first mate and four of his small crew that hadn't decided to cut his gizzard out yet.

Most of the remaining crew were just as happy to see the last of Captain Dover, though he left their pay in arrears, so when Ayscough harangued them to sign on at civilian pay rates, with a golden guinea for a joining- bounty, and the promise of untold loot, they had agreed to stay with her.

He would have no surgeon or purser, no sailing master-none of those excess warrants who made an officer's