King`s Captain

the Prime Minister and Councillor of The Exchequer-William Pitt the Younger-were drawing up to add to the annual Admiralty expenditures. 'His Nobs,' King George, had been rumoured to have left off dunking and gambling at Bath and had seemed amenable to the general pardon the mutineers requested. Tory, pro- government dailies had hinted that crews were returning to full discipline, taking their exiled officers back aboard…

A few days later though…

Pitt had spoken to the Commons, rambling through a speech that notably omitted any mention of Navy, Mutiny, Seamen, Pay, or even Water! The Whigs and Fox-ite factions had been on him like dogs on a butcher's castoffs; questions had been raised, enquiries into the matter threatened. Elderly Admiral Lord Howe had had to rise to defend himself.

Howe had admitted that he had gotten anonymous copies of their demands weeks before but had been reassured by Sir Hugh Seymour, the Admiralty's senior man at Portsmouth, that he'd seen no signs of mutinous assemblies, seen any grievance letters, and had thought that the copies Howe had gotten were the work of a malicious individual. Pitt and his First Lord of The Admiralty had been forced to admit that they had had inklings of mutiny-and had sat on it!

Following Pitt's dreadful speech, the sailors had put officers ashore once more, re-hoisted the red flags, and re-rove the yard-ropes, sure they were being set up with false promises for another betrayal, soon to be winnowed and hung as Culloden's ringleaders had been.

To make things worse, the Earl Spencer had told Commons that he had ordered completely new sets of weights and measures to be used for sailors' rations-Admiralty could not redress that grievance until the new weights were available.

That, Lewrie scoffed, was a bald-faced admission that corruption and graft went from bottom to top, from ships' pursers to the dockyard warehouses, from jobbers to the Victualling Board itself! That even civilian purveyors were being cheated when they put their goods on the Admiralty scales!

Panicked by the resurgence of the mutiny, Commons had elected to scrounge up an extra Ј900,000 for the Navy Estimate, and the King signed a pardon, but by then it was too little, too late!

'Not over yet, sir?' Beakman's daughter enquired as she fetched him a top-up of spring ale.

'No, and God knows when it ever will be… thankee,' Lewrie told her.

'Poor Mizzuz Cony, not knowin'…' the daughter said, with a tiny cluck of her tongue, before returning to the long, oak bar counter.

Never married after Will took up with Maggie, Lewrie speculated; gettin long-in-tooth and haggard. God, a publican's daughter not taken yet, even did she look like the arse-end of a sheep? He rather doubted that Mistress Beak-man had much real sympathy in her soul for Maggie Cony; spite and glee for a long-awaited comeuppance was more like it!

He turned to the Tory papers. Both The Times and the Gazette were incensed that the mutineers were demanding relief from tyrannical officers and mates too. How dare 'common' seamen hope to dictate to the aristocracy, the squirearchy, their 'betters' to decide who was capable, or suitable, to command them! Never in Hell, both papers were firm in saying, should HM government, Admiralty, or the landed gentry surrender their rights as honourable gentlemen; why, it violated that sacred principle of the gentleman-officer, the dignity of the Navy-the dignity of the monarch himself! Why, with times so parlous, and revolution run riot on the Continent, in America…!

Lewrie shoved The Times away in disgust. Right here, on this very village commons the day before, the local Yeomanry and Militia had drilled. As his father had said, to prepare them should they be called out to march to Portsmouth -just in case.

Would the mutineers turn their artillery on the shore, fire upon British troops, if their demands were not met? Would British soldiers fire upon British tars? Lewrie wondered with a frown; that was even a more disturbing question. For if that happened, all bets were off, and England might go the way of France, with blood in the streets and the aristocracy, the King and Queen-and serving officers! Lewrie queasily imagined-thrown out, thrown in gaol, even guillotined, just like it had come to the port of Toulon and his now-dead French Royalist compatriots in '93. Would he and Caroline and the children end up as refugees in foreign lands as those Royalists had? Or dead, like Charles Auguste, Baron de Crillart, and all his kin but Sophie de Maubeuge?

Caroline had kin-Rebel kin-in the Cape Fear country, back in North Carolina. And Caroline and her parents and brothers had fled them too, become refugees in England. Had the American Chiwicks mellowed enough for a welcome, he wondered? But what joy was there in that- the United States had practically scrapped their navy once the Revolution was over, and what could he do, except… farm! Jesus!

There came a hellish din from abovestairs, the scrape and clang of something heavy and metallic, the 'sloosh' of water, followed not a moment later by a trickle of water off the smoky overhead oak beams of the low-ceilinged public house's common rooms.

'What the Devil?' Lewrie griped aloud, standing quickly to flee a positive flood of sudsy water leaking through the ancient floorboards above.

'Oh, so sorry, Squire Lewrie, but we're doin' spring cleaning,' Mistress Beakman gasped. 'Per'aps you'd be safer on the side garden.'

'Thought I'd escaped spring cleaning,' he groused, rescuing his pile of newspapers and his wide-brimmed felt hat. 'Might as well go home at this rate.'

'Sor-ry, Mizzus!' a woman wailed from abovestairs. 'The kettle o' wash water spilled. But it's bringin' up a power o' grime! Will ya wish us t'start on the public rooms then?'

'Aye,' Mistress Beakman called aloft. 'Will you not stay for the mail coach, then, Squire Lewrie Won't be a half-hour, with every road dry so far this week, sir,' she prattled on. 'Should've done the cleanin' and mop-pin' before the Muster Day, but… and wasn't that the grand sight, sir. Your good wife and wee daughter turned out so fine and your ward, Miz Sophie, lookin' so fresh and fetchin' in that pale green chiffony gown, her new straw bonnet, and all… Aye, she's rare wondrous t'see, sir… poor, motherless lass, bein' French and so far from home. Still, Muster Day seemed t'cheer her… Squire Harry and his cavalry lads especial'-she breezed on, fanning her face, as if overcome with lust or excitement herself-'bouncin' on her toes and clappin' and cheerin' so…'

Something was being said beyond idle chatter and 'gush,' Lewrie suspected, and he raised a brow over it. As cattily delighted as she was over Will Cony's 'comeuppance,' and her rival Maggie's sufferings for it at long last, Lewrie suspected that he was being slyly baited.

Will had been his 'man'; and he was the interloper from rakish London who had shamed Harry, stolen his 'intended' Caroline. Did she blame him for being jilted, and was she now suggesting that he would be getting a well-deserved 'comeuppance' too?

'Fetch you a fresh mug in the side garden whilst ya wait for the mail coach t'come then, shall I, sir?' she chirped.

'Uhm, aye… I s'pose,' Lewrie allowed.

'Lord, as if I don't have enough worries on my plate as it is!' Lewrie grumbled to himself as he betook himself out to the open-sided, covered garden porch and took a dry seat at a newish oak-slab table.

World's goin' t'Hell in a hand-basket, and even domesticity has its pitfalls, he decided. Oh, there'd been signs, right from Easter Church services. 'Women!' he muttered under his breath.

They just won't do the sensible thing. Offer sugar or salt and they'll take salt, every time…'cause it's sharper tasting. Bad man, oh, a baddd man- stay away, he wished he could simply order her. Or don't, you silly chit; be a fool, if you wish.

He supposed Sophie was bored to tears by the poor choice of eligible bachelors in the neighbourhood. She was eighteen now, and her sap was rising; and girls that age began to think of which tree a nest could be built in… and how best to feather it. Sophie was penniless, without dowry or 'dot' to offer, without personal paraphernalia to take with her, beyond what Caroline had sewed with her, and if she thought the Lewries would stand her marriage portion, she'd best have another think coming… especially if her choice was as abysmally unfortunate as the Honourable Harry Embleton!

'Maybe it's simple youthful rebellion,' he grumbled. The 'tween years' headstrong urge to kick over the traces, no matter how gentle or kind the traces? 'Or maybe it's because she's French!' He smirked.