replied, allowing sarcasm free, but subtle, rein. 'The 'Kenyon Guns,' the 'Erato Guns,' something along those lines. Our war with France drags on with so few victories since the Battle of the Nile, and the last time that our Army took a hand, it was a disaster. We shove mountains of money at weak and disappointing allies, and are at present without any. The people at home need something to make the struggle feel worth it.
'Though,' Ayscough sourly mused, dancing the coils of his apple peel like a spring atop the table, 'given the late Commander Kenyon's, ah… peculiarities, 'Erato's Guns' might be best.'
'Peculiarties, sir?' Capt. Cheatham enquired with a sharp look.
'Health was failing fast,' Ayscough almost grunted, 'and he was a horrid drunkard, and… as Lewrie here gathered from Erato?, surviving officers, Kenyon favoured… 'the windward passage,' ' he concluded in a conspiratorial whisper. 'Preyed on his most fetching seamen.'
'A 'Molly,'' by God?' Capt. Cheatham erupted, looking at Lewrie.
'And poxed to the eyebrows, sir,' Lewrie related in a soft voice. 'Dyin' of it, most-like, in the final stages of the Pox, when it erodes one's brain matter. That's the only explanation for how he rambled so badly, and the way he was so grudgeful and nigh-insubordinate towards me. I did put it down to how much he drank at first, aye, or his spite to find one of his former Mids promoted beyond him, but… my Surgeon tells me the disease robbed him of self-control. Think a thing, speak a thing, sir. Put him in his place a time or two, and I thought he'd learned his lesson, but…'
'Bloody Hell!' Capt. Cheatham spat, writhing in utter disgust; for the topic, for the mortal, bestial sin, for having to hear a word of it, most-like. He waved urgently for the port decanter. 'How does a 'back-gammoner' become a Commission Sea Officer, much less gain the command of a King's ship? Should've been found out years ago!'
'He was very careful to play 'Jack, Me Hearty,' sir,' Lewrie explained. 'When I served under him in the West Indies, one would never have guessed… when he had all his wits intact, and could be thoughtful of his Pub-lick Face. The one glimpse I got that roused my suspicions could have been explained away, and I was just a Middy, so what did I know of things? No in flagrante delicto, just…'
Capt. Cheatham raised a stiff hand to ward off the rest, and to shush any graphic description; he found restoration in the port.
'Was he extremely discreet, and kept up a stout facade, well…,' Ayscough stuck in gloomily. 'And, remember, the Navy was very short of competent officers in '94 and '95 as the Fleet expanded. Kenyon was most-like nigh- anonymous, with a mediocre repute round the middle of the Lieutenants' List, just senior enough for promotion.'
'The stress of living a life like that, sirs,' Lewrie sketched out, impatient for the decanter to pass his way, too. 'Then, comes a ship of his own at last, and the strain and loneliness of command atop it? A sense of bein' second but to God at sea, and with his wits goin' fast? and losin' command of himself, to boot? We all have known captains who turned… eccentric.'
'Damme, Lewrie, you would bring up my trained circus of bread-room rats!' Capt. Charlton stuck in, tongue in cheek, to slice through their gloom. It worked; such an outre statement stopped them in their tracks and made them howl with relieving laughter, declaring Charlton a rare rogue, and starting a period of shared reveries of just how eccentric some of their old captains had seemed to them when they were Midshipmen or junior Lieutenants.
'Thank God the poor man's gone, then,' Cheatham said with a sad moue on his face, pouring himself another topping glass when the port got round to him again. 'And, for the good of his family, the Navy, and his repute… false though it may have been… he fell with his sword in hand, his face to the foe, and his wounds in his front.'
'Hear, hear,' Ayscough and Charlton chorused.
Do I tell 'em? Lewrie asked himself, unable, to keep a wince off his phyz, for he had conducted the sea-burials for Kenyon and his men, and had seen on which side of his body Kenyon had been pierced, before they had been sewn up in canvas and tipped over the side under a flag.
'How did he fall, Captain Lewrie?' Commodore Ayscough enquired, after seeing his pained expression.
Oh, Gawd! Lewrie cringed; tell the truth, and every Man-Jack in Erato is bound for the noose. Lie, and face a court-martial myself!
'Commander Kenyon, along with a Midshipman and five of his boat crew…,' Lewrie began, hesitantly. 'They stepped ashore onto the town piers right after Erato came alongside them, facing the town's shops and houses on the waterfront. There was a company of French infantry, sheltered in them, and…'
'Lovely young fellows, were they?' Capt. Cheatham sneered.
'Ah, in point of fact, I'd s'pose so, sir,' Lewrie stumbled at the interruption. 'Weapons in hand, all that. Preceding the Marines, who should've been first ashore. There were French musket volleys, and return fire… swivel guns were fired at the windows and doorways, to drive the Frogs to cover, so the landing-party could join them. There is a slight possibility that their deaths were the result of a combination of fire, sirs… hostile and friendly. Might've charged cross the muzzle of a swivel, just as it lit off, accidentally-like, 'bout the same time as some Frenchmen got a few shots off, too.'
There, that'll explain it, Lewrie told himself, trying to think of what Clot-worthy Chute had told him of how to spot a liar, or how to read a card player; what cutty-eyed expressions liars and the confident wore, and tried to plaster the exact opposite on his face. Blink too much, or was it no blinking at all; shrug too deep, eschew a sheepish smile, make firm eye contact, what was it?
Truth to tell, someone aboard Erato, maybe two or three someones, had fired their swivels about the same time, in the general direction of the village's buildings, but had 'sorta-kind of ' missed, and had blown the entire party off their feet, all the wounds from behind, and no one had cared much at all. Even Lt. Cottle could not say who had done it, and, from the cutty-eyed way he 'd looked when Lewrie had put it to him, Cottle most-like hadn't made all that much of an effort to find out who did it, and probably would not, in future, either!
Now, the Eratos would shut their mouths as tight as oysters, and shrug their collective innocence. Oh, it was murder most foul, mutiny and a death-sentence for everyone involved, whether by omission or commission; the ones who did it, and the ones who didn't, but kept mum, and abetted the perpetrators; for those who refused, for whatever reason, to investigate, or those who did but wrote a lying report!
'Indeed,' Commodore Ayscough sternly commented, looking leery of such an explanation, making Lewrie feel as if his eyes would begin to water, if he kept eye contact with him very much longer. 'You find it a tad suspicious, do you, Lewrie?'
'Yes, and no, sir,' Lewrie tried to weasel out, wondering where inspiration was when you really needed it. Oh, yes! 'One may think that Erato's crew, the bulk of 'em, might have felt shamed by Kenyon's doings, and his blatant favouritism, and… personal tastes. Yet, on the other hand, it could have been accidental. Or… premeditated.'
Here we go, premeditated, aye! Lewrie felt like chortling right out loud as a thought came to him, as if whispered into his ear by some perverse wee, winged muse.
'By Kenyon himself, sir,' Lewrie stated. 'What? Kenyon!' 'Oh, rot!' 'Murder, and dumb mutiny!' 'Feature this, sirs,' Lewrie went on, both hands on the table, and slowly rolling his port glass between them. 'Commander Kenyon was sick enough to know he was failing fast, that the Pox was eating him alive. Despite his best intentions he knew he had little command of his lusts, and just enough wit left to see the reactions of his crew.
'He was aging badly, his hair and formerly handsome features going, too, sirs,' Lewrie improvised, 'wasting away to a scare-crow, and… I had put him on warning that if he sauced me one more time, he'd be charged for it, and brought before a Court for insubordination, and there went his naval career, drab as it was. He wasn't fetching anymore, d'ye see, sirs?
