King`s Captain

Bosun Cony's wife come callin', sah. Missuz Maggie? Say she got t'speak t'ya, sah. It be urgent, she say.'

'Um, ahh…' Lewrie grunted, disentangling himself, helping Caroline up from their compromising position, so she could push her gown and her hair straight, and he could reset his waist-coat, shoot cuffs, and appear 'respectable.' 'Very well, Andrews, I'll be out directly. I do declare, Caroline. Speak of the Devil, hmmm?'

'Hardly the Devil, darling,' Caroline chuckled. 'Maggie's too dear to us to be calling her that. More-like… seeing a red-bird as sign someone'll come unexpected. Like we believed in the Carolinas.'

Lewrie opened the doors and stepped out into the entry-hall, to espy a worried-looking Maggie Cony, the flaxen-haired helpmeet to his old friend and compatriot. While not a classic beauty, for a country woman she was usually most fetching, in a strong, no-nonsense way… and more than a match for her absent husband.

'Mistress Cony!' He beamed. 'And young Will too! Bless me… nothing's gone amiss since we saw you at church, has it? Something urgent, I heard?'

Will had been detained at Portsmouth for a few days longer, just until the ship could be properly housed in a stone dry dock. Lewrie had issued leave-tickets for the senior hands, and Will should be on his way home, unless the new captain had decided not to honour them. He'd sent a thick packet of sea-letters on with Andrews and Padgett too, as they'd come on to Anglesgreen with his goods. Everything had been just fine, he'd thought…

'Somethin' awful happenin' down t'Portsmouth, Captain Lewrie, sir,' Maggie blurted out. 'Coach just came with a note from Will… fetched it me at the Red Swan. He'll not be coming home, sir!'

'Well, damme, he shall!' Lewrie declared, 'if I have to coach down to Portsmouth myself and set his new captain straight. I give you my word on that, Mistress.'

'Worse'n that, sir. Will got his leave-ticket, aye, and his new captain said 'twas alright him comin' on, but… Now he writes he can't leave the ship nor the dockyards. Can't leave Portsmouth a'tall, sir! None o' the sailors can. There's been mutiny in Portsmouth… nigh on the whole Channel Fleet, sir! Navy won't take any orders t'sail, won't stir, 'til their… demands have been met! Oh Lord, Captain Lewrie, sir!' Maggie Cony said, one hand for her son, and wringing the other in her apron. 'Mutiny, sir! They'll fetch soldiers t'put it down, an' my Will right in the middle of it. There'll be hundreds kilt a'fightin'… hundreds hanged, 'fore 'tis done!'

'Mutiny!' Lewrie gasped. 'What, the whole bloody Fleet? It… that just can't be! They've… mean t'say…!' He sputtered, turning to Caroline for assurance this wasn't a nightmare.

One ship, aye, with an ogre for a captain. Lewrie shivered, wincing as he recalled how close HMS Cockerel was to mutiny with that batch of slave-driving fiends in her gunroom and midshipmen's berths.

He saw Caroline shudder, but seem to shrug too, as if this was merely one more threatening event in a whole year of earth-shaking, and unbelievable, events. With all the anger and want in the land she had just spoken of, all the unrest he'd seen in those penny tracts, those Republican, rebellious screeds…!

Labourers noting, aye… civilians'd do such-he groped for a thread of understanding-but never the tars! Not my jacks! Irish, maybe-but the best part of the Navy-his Navy? And where might it spread?

'Have you Will's letter, ma'am? Good. Let me see that!'

BOOK TWO

Tamen aspera regum perpetimur iuga,

nec melio parere recuso.

Yet we endure the cruel yoke of kings,

nor though the better man do I refuse obedience.

– Argonautica, Book V, 487-89

Valerius Flaccus

CHAPTER EIGHT

They took the shorter road down from Portsdown Hill this time beneath the furiously whirling signal telegraph station, to the slightly inland town of Portsea. It was a clear day, so Lewrie, Maggie Cony, and young Will could espy far beyond Gosport, Haslar Hospital, several forts including the one opposite Portsmouth Point-manned, the forts were. Above the walls of fortifications circling Portsmouth itself, framed 'twixt Portsmouth and Southsea Castle-pent atop the golden-galleon-spire of the Church of St. Thomas A' Becket-lay the Fleet.

Proud three-decker 1st- and 2nd-Rate flagships, two-decker 3rd and 4th Rates, slim frigates and sloops of war, brigs, schooners, and cutters, bulky transports converted from men-o'-war to carry troops and stores for a world- wide war; sheer-hulks and receiving ships reduced to a gantline and lower-most masts, where new-caught lubbers and seamen languished 'til a warship had need of them.

All of them flying battle-flags, the stark, unadorned blood-red flags without the British canton! Commission pendants still streamed, but none of the flagships wore broad pendants denoting the presence of an admiral or commodore-only the battle colours, nothing national!

Militia paraded in Portsea as their coach slowed, shunted aside to make room for soldiery and idling onlookers. There were hardly any sailors to be seen, naval or civilian. Marines in full kit stood here and there in full squads, their bayonets unsheathed and fixed under the muzzles of their muskets. Usually, a parade of troops brought out the spectators, raised cheers, the fluttering of handkerchiefs by the town women, and the tittery delight of youngsters. But not this time, Lewrie noted; now, the doleful beats of drums, the clomp of crude-made boots, the clop of his coach's horses, and the funereal rumbles from its iron-shod wheels seemed the only sounds.

Right-into the main gate of the dockyard, and several minutes in argument with a Marine Captain, no matter Lewrie was wearing uniform; then at last proceeding past the Hard, Gun Wharf, the mast-pool, and the small Royal Naval Academy, and the Commissioner's House, the Rope Walk-and a few more aggressively curious roving marine patrols!-until they could alight hard by one of the stone graving docks, where HMS Jester stood propped and stranded, looking like a scrofulous, dead whale. With her bottom exposed, all the sheet copper, paper, and felt ripped off, and a good third of her underwater planking stripped away for replacing, she looked more a shipwreck than a ship of war. She did not fly any flags, since she was officially out of commission, in the hands of the yards. And, Lewrie was grateful to see, she did not sport that rebellious red banner either.

'I'd go aboard,' he told an idling yard worker by her brow, eyeing that shaky-looking gangplank which led from the lip of the dock to her starboard entry-port, perched rather high-ish above the floor of the graving dock and all its accumulated trash, muck, and filth, in about a foot of verminous-looking harbour water. A few rare workmen pretended to do something constructive beneath her.

'You her cap'um, sir?' The dock worker yawned.

'Her last captain,' Lewrie explained.

^:' 'Ey ain't too fond o' awficers come callin', sir. But ye c'n try.' The man shrugged.

'Hoy, Jester/' Lewrie shouted, about halfway across that brow.

Several heads popped up over the sail-tending gangway bulwarks, where a harbour-watch party evidently had been loafing. A few sailors mounted to the quarterdeck, hands in their pockets and their hats far back on their heads.

Damme! Lewrie fumed; no warrant or petty officer standing deck-watch? And common seamen, walking the quarterdeck without leave?

'Permission to come aboard, to visit…' Lewrie called over.

'Denied, sir… sorry,' a strange voice rasped back. 'Beggin' yer pardon, sir, but… there'll be no officers return aboard 'til all our grievances been settled.'

Lewrie went colt-eyed at that reply, his eyebrows up to his hat brim in shock at being spoken to so by a