H.M.S. COCKEREL

of a backgammoner's orgy. Cheap, low beds lined the walls, feather mattresses and blankets stood service for the carpet. The room reeked of spilled rum, gin, brandy and ale. Several candles guttered in the corners, so the participants might take pleasure in observing, between bouts. Even by that guttery light, Lewrie could pick out several seamen, and a pair of snot-nosed, shivering ship's boys, from the pasty-skinned, maggot-pale civilians.

One of the civilians-again, unfettered-had hurriedly dressed. His clothes were elegant and expensive-silks and satins, fine-cut figured velvet coat and breeches, expensive shoes, the accoutrements of a courtly salon slug. And a courtier's smug airs.

'I am a gentleman, sir,' he began, with a sneer at discovering an officer to whom he could complain. 'I am a civilian. I am not, nor have I ever been, a sailor, sir. Therefore you have no authority over me, and I insist you let me pass, at once!'

'But you are a bugger, ain't you?' Lewrie countered. 'What if we just call for the 'Charlies' and hold you 'til a magistrate comes?'

'You would not dare, sir,' the slim young courtier simpered. 'No magistrate would sanction the 'Press in his domain, sir, even were he aware of your presence… which awareness I most sincerely doubt,' the man shot back, sure of his ground. 'Show me your warrant, sir, or confess that your actions this evening have no sanction.'

Damme, Lewrie groaned; a bloody sea lawyer! And, no, we don't have a warrant to show. That's why we were successful tonight. Word couldn't get out, and the streets about weren't warned to expect us.

'I see' the slim aristocrat purred in triumph. 'So it will be impossible for you to detain me, d'ye see. Nor summon any local authorities 'pon me. Nor hold me 'gainst my will. You alone have authority to detain, to lay hands upon me, sir, but your writ does not extend to your minions. And your bully-bucks have already laid hands upon me, striven to prevent me from dressing, or departing. That constitutes, of itself, a wrongful-taking… for which you, and you alone, are liable before a court of justice, sir.' He was singsonging with glee.

Damme, he's well versed, too! Damn his eyes!

'And I feel it my obligation to caution you, sir, that I am from a most influential and powerful City family. With a circle of friends far more powerful than are yours, I'd expect, with legal assistance far beyond your miserable purse. You are in difficulties enough already. Detain me a moment longer, and whatever befalls you will be a greater measure of chastisement than ever you might imagine. Now let me pass, I say!'

He has me by the short hairs, Lewrie gloomed to himself; all he had said was true. He could be bound up in court for months. Oh, the Admiralty would pay his legal expenses, bail him out of debtors' prison if he lost the judgment, and if the fop demanded a huge settlement. But he'd be out thousands over the matter. And he couldn't risk losing every farthing he had.

'You speak for the others, too, I take it?' Lewrie found spirit enough to sneer in return.

'My dear sir, I care little for any but myself,' the man confessed gaily. 'These sailors are properly in your limited jurisdiction. They and the rest… well, it was dull sport, after all. I will take my manservant yonder, and depart. Should you have no objections?'

'Get out,' Lewrie grumbled at last. 'Get out, and be damned to you, you…!'

'Adieu,' the elegant young bugger smirked, making a 'leg' and sweeping his showy, egret-feathered hat across his breast. 'Bonne nuit. Though not, you will understand… au revoir… n'est-ce pas?'

'Sufferin'…' Lewrie sighed, slamming his truncheon into his palm, over and over, as the courtier and his shivering 'man' departed.

'Aye, 'at stinks, sir,' the bosun muttered sourly. 'Nothin' ye could do, else. Not with th' likes o' himl'

'He left one of 'em behind, at any rate,' Lewrie observed, as he walked deeper into the orgy chamber to gaze down upon an unconscious form huddled hard up against a cot.

'Well, 'at'uncutupabitrough, 'e did, Mister Lewrie. Hadta bash 'im a good'un. Gawd! 'Ese pore tykes. Just babes, some of 'em. Wish we could go 'fore a magistrate. Local parish might take 'em in, set 'em right, 'fore they gets buggery in their blood.'

'This parish?' Lewrie scoffed, still squirming over his defeat. 'What could they do? Already Irish bogtrotter poor. Full of future victims. Can't have boy brothels in rich parishes. Like that sneerin' shit, just left? Prays the loudest in his family pew, I'd wager, and plays upright for all to see. Can't take his sort of pleasure in a good parish. But that's what the East End is for, ain't it?' And I should know, Lewrie shrugged in wry self-awareness. In my early days, I was all over the East End whores, Drury Lane to Cheapside. 'Least, they were girlsl And I paid well. Full value and more.

'What say we let 'ese litt'lest beggars go, Mister Lewrie?' the bosun almost begged. 'Coupla cabin boys, 'eir sort'd not be missed f r long, no with s'many volunteers. We take 'em in, sir, all they get is caned, then discharged, anyways. T'other tykes, well…'

'Aye, bosun, turn 'em out,' Lewrie decided, unable to look the quivering, fearful children in the eyes. 'Tongue- lash before they go, though. Put some fear o' God in 'em. But we take the rest with us.'

'Aye, aye, sir.'

Lewrie went to the last, unconscious, civilian by the cot. He rolled him over with his foot, hoping for signs that he might yet be a seaman, subject to impressment. And his pitifully weak writ.

'Well, damme!' he gasped, as if butted in the solar plexus. It had been years! 1780, if it was a day! That last bitterly cold morning when the naval captain and his brute of a coxswain had come for him, in his father's house in St. James', to drag him off as an unwilling midshipman. There, lying at his feet in enforced 'repose,' was the bane of his adolescent life. Even with a trickle of blood at the corner of his mouth, a livid bruise on his cheek and blood matted in his lank, sweaty blond hair, the bastard appeared to be sneering, in truncheon-induced sleep! No, there was no mistaking the rail-thin, haughty, thoroughly despicable face of his half brother Gerald Willoughby. His backgammoning, windward-passage-preferring, butt-fucking sodomite Molly of a half brother.

'Oh, God… thankee, just!' Alan whispered with sudden glee-How many nights he'd swung in his hammock aboard Ariadne, his first ship, with silent tears of rage coursing his cheeks, wasting all that precious sleep with schemes of revenge on all who had connived to push him off, a hopeless, clueless victim, to sea.

His father, for Alan's inheritance he'd hoped to steal; their solicitor Pilchard, who'd forged and swindled in the cause; his icily beautiful half sister Belinda, who'd lured him to her bed so he could be discovered 'raping' her; even the parish vicar who'd been duped into being witness to his alleged crime.

Most especially, this taunting, cruel, sneering, trouble-making, back-stabbing, lying, canting, sneaking, arrogant swine!

Lewrie's ardour had at last cooled, though he had relished news of them. By '86, off for the Bahamas, he'd almost put them out of mind. He did learn, though, that Pilchard had been arrested long before, for forgery, theft and huge debt; and if he hadn't done a 'Newgate hornpipe' on the gallows, then he was a prime candidate for the first convoy to New South Wales, now England had once more a place for those doomed to be 'transported for life.'

Belinda… their mutual father'd robbed her and Gerald of their dead mother's inheritance, too; run through every penny, and hadn't got his hands on Alan's, so they'd been turned out, penniless. He'd heard she made her living on her back. He'd even seen her listed in the new gentleman's guide to Covent Garden whores… a high-priced courtesan, in the latest edition.

Gerald, well… they didn't publish guides for what he did. He had survived, after a fashion; toadying, fawning, conniving and scheming to ingratiate himself with every member of his peculiar 'tribe' in London, to sponge off others' largesse, so he could still make a grand show about town in the latest fashion, in the best circles. As long as he allowed other men of his stripe to ride him.

Lewrie almost giggled as he took in how low Gerald had fallen in the years since he'd last heard of him. A stupendous comedown, if this establishment was the best he could afford to frequent. Or the meanest strait he'd been reduced to, as a market for his fading wares. Getting buggered for sixpence, instead of guineas.