'He said something like that would be his reaction. Good for 'Old Jarvy'!'
'Sent out orders for anyone who contributed to their trip, and anyone who joined in what he termed illegal combinations to be sacked, as well. The gall of the greedy… to threaten to walk out, just as our Navy is faced with another threat. Well, they got what they deserved.'
'Hear, hear!' Lewrie heartily agreed.
'Ahem… gentlemen,' the head butler intoned at the doors to the dining room, 'breakfast is served.'
'You spoke with Lord Saint Vincent?' ex-Major Baird enquired as they queued up to file in and take seats.
'A few days ago… looking for a ship,' Lewrie told him, taking a bit of joy to be known among the powerful. 'I was at the battle back in '97. Followed Nelson when he countered the Spanish van, and met Admiral Jervis, after. At least he remembered me, but nought was promised. We'll see. Ah, mullet kippers!'
He was famished, for he and Tess had fallen asleep just a bit after midnight, and had not sent down for their usual cold collation. A pork chop, a couple of kippers, two slices of fatty and crisp bacon, with two fried eggs and a heap of fried diced potatoes, and even the brown bread was cut two fingers thick, and nicely, crunchily toasted, wanting only slavers of butter and currant jam.
Didn't even linger for coffee or tea when I left, Lewrie thought with a guilty wince at his cowardice. All that had needed to be said had been said; had he found a way to slip out before she woke, he just might have, but…
'Excuse me, sirs… uhm, Captain Lewrie,' the day porter said in a soft voice, leaning close to his chair, 'you've a letter from Admiralty, Captain Lewrie, and there's a messenger awaiting your reply.'
Ho… ly shit! Lewrie thought with a start, and a sudden flood of warmth; And just thankee Jesus!
'You gentlemen will excuse me?' Lewrie said, tossing aside his napkin and sliding his chair back. Frankly, it felt rather good for the other lodgers to goggle at him and speculate in muted whispers as he stepped out into the central hall, and broke the wax seal upon the creamy bond paper, and read it.
Sir,
You are required and directed to report to Admiralty as soon as possible following receipt of this letter, here to declare your immediate availabilty to take upon yourself the charge and command of His Majesty's Frigate, Thermopylae, now lying at Great Yarmouth. A brief written response pursuant to your acceptance of this posting, returned to us by Admiralty Messenger, should precede you. I am, sir,
Sir Evan Nepean,
1st Secty to Admiralty
'You're bloody-damned right I will!' Lewrie whooped with glee, practically bounding for the front desk, and the spare pen and ink. A quick scribbled 'Yes!' and a glance towards the young messenger who stood with his hand out, and Lewrie was headed for the cellar stairs, where he hoped Liam Desmond and Patrick Furfy were loafing.
'There ye are, my lads!' he cried, spotting them both chummily seated near the warm cooking fireplace and griddle stoves, devouring their own breakfasts with gusto. Furfy froze with a length of kipper in his mouth. 'Round up all my chests from the storage down here, and the garret, and see I've all the keys handy. We've got a ship!'
'Huzzah!' Desmond shouted. 'D'ye hear, Pat? We're goin' back t'sea, and about time, too!'
'I'll go dress, and be back in a few hours,' Lewrie quickly told them. 'Before nightfall, there'll be a power o' shoppin' to do, so you two look lively now!'
'Wot's 'er name, sir?' Furfy called to his captain's back as Lewrie hustled back up the cellar stairs.
'Thermopylae!' Lewrie shouted over his shoulder. 'A frigate!'
'Wot'sorta name's Therm… whativer, Liam?' Furfy asked his compatriot once Captain Lewrie had gone.
'Why, ye great, ignorant spalpeen,' Desmond chid him as he cut two slices of bread for a last fatty-bacon sandwich, ' 'twas a famous battle from long ago, or a famous admiral o' some sort o' th' Greeks or Romans. Iver hear th' English name a ship fer anythin' else? Get a move on, Pat… lash up an' stow, me lad, for sure as God made th' green apples fer a good purge, we're off t'th' Baltic with all o' th' others!'
'Gonna fight th' heathen Roosians, arrah!'
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
By mid-day the next morning, Lewrie and his small party were on the road east-London to Chelmsford, Chelmsford to Ipswich, and east to the coastal road to Great Yarmouth, where the fleet was gathering for the Baltic expedition. It was an expensive and long trip in a hired carriage, with a carting waggon following close behind which bore all of Lewrie's stored furnishings, wine, and hastily bought supplies for God knew how long a time at sea.
Wine by the case, whisky by the barricoe, brandy by the gallons; those damned furs, which, at such short notice, Lewrie could only purchase some used items, and those reeking of badly cured hides and camphor. Whatever they were actually pelts of, he had no idea at the moment. There were dried sausages and smoked fish for the cats… the requisite keg of dry beach sand he could find for their necessary box he could buy later… his crated-up plate and pewter service, his glasses and china, the collapsible settee and chairs, a tea-caddy freshly filled with coned suger, tea leaves, along with sacks of chocolate and coffee beans, the grinder, the pots, pans, grills, and utensils, and all the myriad of easily forgotten things that made life at least tolerable at sea. Boot-black and metal polish, spare uniforms and slop-trousers, dress and undress rigs, shirts and stockings, underdrawers and neck-stocks for every occasion from a howling winter gale to a presentation ball before foreign dignitaries, Lewrie thought he'd managed to gather the important things.
There had also been Desmond's and Furfy's sea-chests and kits to re-stock, bills to be paid through his solicitor, money drafts for day-to-day voyaging expenses to be drawn, the quarterly sums to be set aside for his wife, Caroline, and his children, and the farm…
And, letters to write! He'd gotten finger-cramp before he was done, informing his father, Sir Hugo, Sir Malcolm Shockley, Lord Peter, Caroline, Hugh, Sewallis, and Charlotte, that he'd gotten a new ship, and to address future letters in care of Admiralty… and, last of all, a note to Eudoxia Durschenko, then… one to Tess, the poor chit.
And still he fretted as the coach rocked and jangled and thudded into the early evening that there might be something important that he'd forgotten, and might be unavailable in Great Yarmouth shops.
'Uhm, sir…,' Liam Desmond spoke up at last, after the boredom of watching the flat and depressing countryside of Essex rolling by in the gathering twilight. 'What sorta frigate is this… Therm-diddle?'
'Thermopylae?' Lewrie grunted, dragging himself back from a reverie of his night with Tess. 'Ah, she's a Fifth Rate of thirty-eight guns… eighteen pounders,' he explained, repeating what little he'd been told by Mr. Nepean. 'They took her lines off the French Hebe, but she's British-built, a little longer than the old ones… one hundred fifty feet on the range of the deck. So many of them coming into service, they're callin' her one of the Leda class. I've heard that they're good, stable gun platforms, and handle extemely well. Over a thousand tons burthen.'
'Wot's it mean, though, sir, Therm… how ye say it?' Furfy pressed.
'A very long time ago, the Persians tried to invade Greece with a million-man army, and a fleet of five hundred ships,' Lewrie replied. 'The Greeks acted like the House of Commons on a bad day, and couldn't agree to cooperate… They were all a bunch of city-states, not a real country then, so… the Spartans under King Leonidas set out to stop 'em. He picked a narrow pass right by the sea… high cliffs above, and a straight drop from the road, a place with a hot spring like at the resort of Bath that the Greeks called Thermopylae, which means a hot spring. And there they fought, for nigh on a week, with the Persians crammed into a narrow front, no more than twenty men wide, dyin' by the thousands 'cause they couldn't drive through the Spartans and their spears, shields, and swords. The Persian king, Xerxes, lost a tenth part of his soldiers. That gave time enough for the Athenians to beat the Persians in great sea-battles that destroyed most of the Persian fleet, and let the Greeks sort themselves out and raise their own army. Leonidas and the Spartans saved Greece… kept it from turning into a mess as bad as the Ottoman Empire, and saved the basis of our civilisation.'
'Spartans, now!' Furfy enthused. 'Ain't there a Spartiate in the Navy, arready? Lotsa ships named for Greeks an' Romans, both. I think there was even a Leonidas, too, weren't there, Liam?'
'Think I heard th' name, Pat,' Desmond told his friend. 'So, sir… once th' Spartans saved th' day, did they make this Leonidas king over all?'
'Uh, no…,' Lewrie had to confess. 'A traitor showed the Persians a way round the mountains that was un-
