There was a carefully folded pile of civilian long clothing he took to be Gerald's. Lewrie knelt to examine them. He still sported silk stockings, yes, but they were raveled above the knees and darned where they'd run. His shirt boasted a puffy lace jabot, but the rest, which the waist-coat would hide, was a faded, much-mended horror from a rag-picker's barrow. The seat of his pale blue velvet breeches was worn shiny, his once-elegant satin waistcoat had patches of bullion and silver embroidery missing. And his hat! Gerald had been rather keen on fashionable hats. Gerald's wine-coloured beaver was greasy with too much past sweat, table oils, hair dressing, and stained by overlong exposure to the elements.
Alan poked about until he found Gerald's carefully hidden purse, a worn-bare, figured-silk poke. It held a mere two shillings eleven pence. Prompted by past remembrance, he dug into a cracked shoe, delving into Gerald's favourite hidey-hole, and found… a single crown. And this was the top-lofty bastard who'd feared going out of an evening unless he could sport at least fifty pounds! He'd thought it ungentlemanly!
Lewrie stood up suddenly as the lank bastard groaned and rolled his head, exposing teeth grayed by the mercury cure for pox. He spun on his heel and fled the room, before Gerald awoke.
'Bosun,' he called, trying to keep his rising malevolent grin in check. 'Bosun Tatnall?' 'Sir,' that worthy grunted.
'Seems to me there's nought we may do to shut this horror down. Nothing official, that is, but…' Alan began, biting his cheek.
'Burn h'it t'th' groun', sir, that'd suit,' Tatnall scowled. 'Probably a dozen more like it in spitting distance. But, we could do some real good this night, even so,' Lewrie went on. 'Can't stay open without its owner, or its star performer up yonder,' Lewrie joshed, almost elbowing the man in confidential camaraderie. 'Do you not think that old tripes-and-trullibubs would make a fine volunteer, bosun? Once you convince him that joining's a sight better than being hanged for a bugger?'
'Oh, aye, sir!' Tatnall agreed heartily. 'An' if th' bugger tries 'is ways 'board ship, they'll flay 'at maggoty flesh off n 'is bones! Cut a feller soft'z 'im like fresh cheese, 'ey would, sir!'
'Pity about that shop door below, too, bosun. When we left it, it
'I'll see to 'em, sir, never ya fear.'
And I wonder if that crimp knows where a good tattoo artist may be found this time o' night, Lewrie wondered to himself, hellish happy with the evening's outcome, after all.
Bound and gagged, blindfolded, both muffled and disguised by a filthy sheet, Gerald Willoughby could but grunt, squeal and
The tattooist did complain, though, as he laboured over Gerald's pale, hairless and shallow chest, as the whores hooted encouragement to him, at the poor state of his 'canvas,' at the boot-blacking he had to use; at the weak light and the watching crowd as he strove to complete his masterpiece.
It was rather good, though, considering how Gerald behaved, how violently he struggled against every quill prick, the liberal tots they poured down his maw. The rum won out. Towards the end, his thrashings abated, and he rambled gagged snatches of song, before his lights at last went out, and he began to snore.
And once he was thoroughly comatose, Lewrie, the chuckling crimp and their unwitting accomplice Will Cony, delivered Gerald Willoughby, Esquire, into the gentle ministrations of the Deptford district 'press tender. There to sleep off his monumental drunk-there to be sweetly wafted down-river to the Nore as an impressed sailor-there to awaken with a shriek of horror to a new Me and trade.
Lewrie was mortal certain Gerald no longer had a single influential or fashionable patron who might spring to his aid, so there could be no hope of rescue from without. And from within, Gerald, garbed in slop-clothing, and sporting an especially fine (though new) chest tattoo of a rope-fouled anchor, listed as taken by an Impress officer by the name of Brace-waight, could protest until his face turned blue that he wasn't a sailor, to no avail whatsoever. No, his only hope of escape would be to declare himself for what he was.
But, once 'pressed, he fell under the harsh strictures of the Articles of War, most especially Article the Twenty-Ninth:
Oh, it would be a fine and manly, though austere, life Gerald would be entering, Lewrie thought smugly. Wind, rain, the perils of the sea, foul food, rancid reeks, stern discipline, days aloft on the yards dependent on fickle footholds, the risks of battle. Flogging.
And the weeks and months spent cheek-to-jowl with hundreds of fit, healthy, lithe young men, cooped up on the gun decks, swaying in a narrow hammock, with not one whit of privacy-living as celibate an existence as so many damned monks!
Or else, of course.
Ill
Heu miseros nostrum natosque pateresque!
Hacine nos animae faciles rate nubila
contra mittimur?
Alas, for those of us with fathers or sons
alive! Is this the ship in which we
thoughtless souls are sent forth in
the face of a clouded sky?
– Valerius Flaccus
Argonautica, Book 1,149-152
'Post nubila-Phoebus, Cony,' Lewrie informed his man. 'My thought for the day. 'After clouds-sunshine'!'
'Iff n ya say so, sir,' Cony replied, trying to shelter under a scrap of canvas in the bumboat, as Portsmouth Harbour seethed at the lash of a sullen April rain shower.
Bare days after his antic over his half brother Gerald, there had at last come a packet from the Admiralty. Perhaps Rear-Admiral Sir George Sinclair had turned his toes up, or sailed. Perhaps some rumour of Garvey's past dealings in the Bahamas had come to light at last. Or, more likely perhaps, his and Captain Lilycrop's almost weekly letters to far and near had become such a nuisance to some overworked clerk- whatever, Lieutenant Alan Lewrie, RN, was ordered to make his way to Portsmouth instanter and report aboard the
Even the gloom of a drizzly day could not dampen his appreciation of his new ship as they neared her, nor could spume, mist nor rain detract from
Her lower hull above the waterline was a glossy ebony, as were her bulwarks. Her gunwales were, however, buff-coloured, and gleamed with the sheen of prized ivory, slick-ened by the rain. The yards on her three towering masts were neatly squared away, of a golden buff from linseed oil or fresh paint where the wooden spars were bared to the gloom; courses, tops'ls, royals and t' gallants all in perfect alignment with each other a'span the decks, and lift lines tugged until each spar lay perfectly horizontal. And not a brace, parrel, halliard or jear hung slack, not
