A King`s Commander

failed for two summers in a row. The piratical Barbary States had grain aplenty, and were more friendly with France than anyone else they pirated.

Yet what had Hotham done with that information? Go look for a convoy? Cover Marseilles and Toulon so tightly that no merchantmen might come out?

No, again! He'd sat as 'sulled up' as a bullfrog at San Fiorenzo, conserving what little energy he was still thought to possess, and had detached Nelson with a squadron of the very sort of ships that should have been prowling the seas in search of the French convoy, or their fleet; not west to interdict-but east, to Genoa! To buck up the Austrians, who didn't have a navy to play with, and were loath to advance one foot west of Genoa without a guard on their seaward flank.

Nelson in Agamemnon, clinging to his half-worn-out 64-gunner like she was a lucky talisman, even though he'd been offered command of newer, larger ships time and again. Fremantle's Inconstant and a fine 32-gun frigate the Southampton, Cockburn's Meleager, two brigs of war, Tarleton and Tartar, the frigate Ariadne, Jester, and a small 14-gun brig-sloop, HMS Speedy, and the humble cutter Resolution.

How satisfying it had been, six days earlier, to set sail for Genoa and Vado Bay, under a commander who could at least be trusted to charge into battle. And to get away from Admiral Hotham.

Naturally, it'd turned into a farce. Not a day out, they'd run into Admiral Martin's entire fleet, twenty-three sail of the line, and supporting frigates, stooging about northeast of Corsica! They'd spent a day and a night being chased themselves this time, turning to combine against any French frigates that got too near, then spinning away when the odds became too daunting. Chased all the way back to San Fiorenzo, and Hotham's 'aid.'

Seven hours it had taken him to rescue them, to recall his shore parties and libertymen, to weigh anchor and lumber out on a poor wind to their rescue. Seven hours of damned fine seamanship to stand off-and-on San Fiorenzo Bay and not be crushed like bugs by the weight of the approaching French line-of-battle ships before Hotham could save them!

And then had come these last four days of slack-weather pursuit, to end up off Toulon, letting Martin get away again. Toothless hounds too feeble to bark; chasing each other back and forth without even a nip on the hindquarters to show for it, as if making a show for the young dogs in the neighborhood; that they still knew how to beat the hounds. Even if neither one couldn't have cared less if they'd actually caught the other. Or remembered what it was a dog really did with a rival dog.

'Piss on the gatepost,' Alan snickered with dismal amusement, 'and toddle off with yer tail high.'

'Sir?' Midshipman Spendlove inquired, close at hand.

'Just maundering, Mister Spendlove. Pay me no mind,' Alan said, blushing to have been overheard, and glowering hellish-black.

'Aye aye, sir,' Spendlove replied meekly, scuttling away from his captain's possible wrath.

As if serving under Hotham were not plague enough, as if a pagan god had decided to muck about with his life of a sudden, everything he held dear seemed to be tumbling down like a house of cards.

Prize Court, Phoebe… Caroline]

He shook himself and shrugged deeper into his coat, turned his face to the dubious freshness of the wind to blank his thoughts of how near he'd come to being a widower.

After Calvi had surrendered, as if a floodgate had been opened, letters from home had begun to arrive on an almost monthly schedule to keep him informed of hearth and family. Caroline was a highly intelligent woman, witty and expressive, and her many letters well-crafted and filled with newsy, chatty gossip, local lore, the farm's doings, what his children had got up to. And how much she loved him.

All of which had made him squirm, but only a little, with shame of his betrayal. Yet it was a socially acceptable betrayal, was it not? Most English gentlemen of his stripe married more for connections or land than love, in the beginning. One had to be careful; it took a rich man's purse to attain a Bill of Divorcement from some unsuitable mort, so they weighed their options, and the girl, and the material benefits she could bring to the marriage, with care. Beauty was valued, as was a pleasant and agreeable demeanor. Mean t'say, if one were stuck forever- more…!

But once at least one male heir was assured of living to adulthood__ two or three was much better-it was expected by both parties in the better sort of Society that the man would keep a mistress for his pleasure, sparing his wife the perils of further childbirth. They might be civil, sociable, and agreeable to each other, still. But it was understood, and tacitly accepted; as long as one had discretion. Many wives even welcomed such an arrangement, and felt a sense of relief. Some few men with the purse, and the ton, for it, kept more than one mistress. A man had his needs, after all! Especially one facing such a lengthy separation, in time and distance.

But Caroline's letters had stopped arriving toward the end of January. Gales and storms in the Channel, the Bay of Biscay? A packet ship lost on-passage, and her latest missive with it? The risk of correspondence over such a long distance that every Navy man faced, Lewrie could have thought. Yet there were letters from London that still arrived, letters from Burgess Chiswick, and his father, in India.

Finally, in April, just after the first indecisive set-to against the French fleet, a letter had come from his brother-in-law Governor in Angles-green. And worry, and longing, coupled with his lingering sense of guilt, in spite of being such a smug hound with purse, needs, and ton, had chilled him to the bone as soon as it was in his hands.

Alan, I most sadly take pen in hand to discover unto you, and most strictly against my dear Sister Caroline's Wishes, and most rigorous Instructions, that both she, and your Children, have been on the very verge of Death.

There'd been wave after wave of illness in the parish, beginning sometime after the harvests were in, and continuing into the new year. Flux, grippe, the influenza and fevers. Many of the elderly and weak, the very old and very young about Anglesgreen had been taken to their beds, and a fair number never rose from them, but had joined what the vicar at St. George's termed The Great Majority.

First to succumb had been little Charlotte, then Hugh, lastly Sewallis, all within two days and nights. First sniffles, headaches and fevers, followed by incontinent bowels, vomiting, chills and the most heartrend-ingly wet, racking coughs.

No cordials, no herbal teas or purchased nostrums or folklore remedies had helped, not even warming pans, hot and dry flannels, or hot and steamy flanneling. The local surgeon-apothecary was an idiot. They'd sent at last to Guildford for a gentleman-physician educated at Edinburgh, whose Jesuit's bark, opium, and antimonies had broken their fevers, whose bleeding had restored the balance of their humors, and whose pills and drops had quieted their coughs, and allowed them to draw breath once more.

Passing quiet, restful nights seemed to restore them wondrous well, though they were for days afterward listless and languorous, quite febrile and weak, with but the most delicate digestions or appetites, as you may well imagine.

Caroline had been too busy to write, Governor further imagined he might understand; later, worn down and too exhausted by her valiant struggle to preserve her dear children's very lives. So, at the very instant that the family could feel relief, and give thanks to a merciful God, Caroline had also come down with chills and fever, headaches and sniffles, then collapsed over supper, pale as Death itself!

Before she took to her bed, she enjoined us all, dear brother-in-law, that we were, under the sternest threats, not to communicate to you any of their travails, so that you, so nobly and honorably in Arduous Service for King and Country, should have no distracting Worries, no additional Burden that might affect that Service. I thought it quite daft but demurred, for the nonce. However, now that…

They'd despaired so much of her life, as Caroline suffered very much more than the children had, that they'd sent to Guildford for the physician once more, and he had all but thrown up his hands, and told them to expect the worst.

Governor Chiswick was also a skilled writer, much too damned skilled! Like some droning bore who relished describing every agony of his own surgery for a stone, Governor had gone to wretched, terrifying and overly excessive details, painting a picture so vivid and ghastly of Caroline's, and the children's, every moan, of how haggard and bedraggled, how skeletal her visage had appeared as she'd sunk to the last extremes.