King, Ship, and Sword

Lewrie mused. 'Where they were born and grew up. Oh, the boys… they love comin' up here t'your place, so I don't imagine it'd pain them too sore… perhaps Sewallis more than Hugh. It will be Charlotte who'll take it worse. Hard as she took losin' her mother, t'lose our old house, too, well… she'd never forgive me for that, on top of all that Governour's put in her head.'

'Son… who's t'say Charlotte'd forgive ye, anyway?' Sir Hugo pointed out with a sad shake of his head and a reassuring tap upon Lewrie's knee.

'Well… there's truth t'that,' Lewrie had to agree after a long moment to think that over. 'There is that.'

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

All worries about being turfed out of his home became moot just two days later, when Lewrie went down to the Olde Ploughman after his daily morning ride for a rum-laced coffee, and found his old Coxswain, Will Cony, waving to him and wiping his hands on his blue publican's apron. 'Mail coach brought ya somethin', Cap'm Lewrie!' Will declared, coming to meet him near the doors. 'Letter from Admiralty, th' most important! Want a drop o' somethin' warmin' whilst ya read it, sir? 'Tis a raw sorta day.'

'Aye, Will, I'd admire rummed coffee,' Lewrie replied, quickly taking his letters and ripping the official wax seal to read it before even taking a seat at a table. Idlers in the public house's common room turned in their chairs at that announcement, worried that a resumption of the war might be coming, though none of the newspapers had yet declared it.

They offered him a ship… another frigate of the Fifth Rate, a 38-gunner with 18- pounder main-battery guns; HMS Reliant, now lying in-ordinary at Portsmouth!

He sat down with a smile on his face, an expression that local people had not seen since he'd come home from Paris, closed his eyes and slowly nodded, as if in a brief prayer of thanks, before hungrily reading his letter again, just to make sure that it was real, that the offer of active commission was true, and not a fantasy.

'Is it war, beggin' yer pardon, sir?' Cony asked in a whisper as he returned with his coffee.

'It doesn't say, Will, but…,' Lewrie informed him an a mutter of his own, 'it may very well be, if they're re- commissioning me.'

'There'll be a press, then. Soon,' Will Cony speculated. 'A hot press. Recruiters comin' t'town, from the Army, but what sorta lad'd go for a soldier when he kin be a sea-dog, by God! Lotta young lads hereabouts, Cap'm Lewrie… barely scrapin' by as day labourers, or down t'the tannery'r brick-works, since the Enclosure Acts took their folks' wee plots o' land, and the commons. I'd wager I could round up a couple dozen likely lads fer your new ship! What's her name, sir?'

'Reliant' Lewrie told him, 'a Fifth Rate Thirty-Eight.'

'A big frigate, aye!' Will Cony exclaimed for one and all in the common rooms. 'HMS Reliant, the Cap'm's got, huzzah! Damme, did I have two feet t'day, I'd go back t'sea quicker'n ya kin say 'knife'!'

'Ye really think ye could?' Lewrie posed, knowing how hard it would be to recruit willing hands in a hard press, and thinking that a dozen or so volunteers from Anglesgreen, who'd known him and Caroline for years, might take the Joining Bounty as a way to get their revenge on the French for the murder of a local favourite.

'Even wif two feet, Will Cony, ye've too much belly t'shin up a mast these days!' a patron hooted.

'An th' Navy won't let ye sling a keg o' yer best ale aboard!' cried another.

'Cony takes th' King's Shillin', who'd make our ale, I ask ye?' shouted a third. 'We got t'keep 'im here. Tie him up 'fore he gits away!'

Lewrie opened a second letter, this one from his old superior in the Adriatic in '96, and a senior officer in the close blockade of the Gironde coast three years before: Captain Thomas Charlton. He was being given a commission, a two-decker Third Rate 74 (he wrote) and, did Lewrie still have need for a Midshipman's berth for his son Hugh, then Charlton would be honoured to accept him. HMS Pegasus was lying in-ordinary at Portsmouth (happy circumstance!) so make haste, etc.

'And my son Hugh has a ship, too,' Lewrie told Cony.

'Runs in the fam'ly, th' sea, it do, sir!' Cony beamed proudly.

'I'll be all night, writin' all the people I have to,' Lewrie said, hurrying through his coffee, 'and get letters off on tomorrow's mail coach. That's a temptin' idea, Will, our local lads. If I could get 'em past the Impress Service into Portsmouth without half of 'em being stolen.'

'An' robbed o' their Joinin' Bounty, aye,' Will Cony agreed with a growl.

'I'm off, and thankee!' Lewrie said, springing to depart.

He rode at a fast lope to Dun Roman to inform his father, spending perhaps an hour arranging for Sir Hugo to serve as his representative, should Phineas Chiswick press the matter after he departed. The next stop was home, his news a delight to Liam Desmond and Pat Furfy, who, no matter how pleasant their lives were on the farm, found that a chance to serve at sea again suited them right down to their toes.

Then it was finger-cramp, ink smudges, and hot sealing wax on his fingers all through the day and early evening, with only a few very brief breaks for dinner, supper, and trips to the 'necessary.' First came his reply to Admiralty, the next to Capt. Charlton, then to his solicitor, Coutts' Bank, Sewallis and Hugh, urging them to come down to London and lodge at the Madeira Club 'til he arrived, and informing Hugh that his fondest wish would soon be realised. After all those, he had to write all the other naval officers from whom he'd asked a place for the boy, telling him that Charlton would take him.

'Note for ya, sir,' Mr. Gower intruded into the library office.

'Hmm?' Lewrie perked up. 'This late? From whom, d'ye know?'

'Governour Chiswick, I reckon, sir,' Gower replied.

Lewrie tore it open and read what Governour's wife, Millicent, had penned; Charlotte wished to sup with them and sleep over with her girl cousin. They would fetch her home by mid-morning tomorrow.

'Awf'lly damned high-handed of em,' Lewrie muttered, thinking that a request sent much earlier would have been more polite, not this 'oh, by the by… ' note, as if they were her parents, not him.

Christ, she's been over there all day? Lewrie realised; I've eat dinner and supper and didn't even note she wasn't here? Well, maybe they are! Or will have t'be.

Charlotte couldn't stay at Dun Roman, not if his father was not present; nor could she reside with him in London, as the old rogue had made very clear. Somebody had to take her on! And who better than 'family,' her only kin… disagreeable as most of them were?

Have t'ride over there and see if they'll board her, permanent, he told himself; arrange for all her clothes, bed-chamber furniture and toys t'go with her. Have familiar things round her… poor tyke.

Or, he reckoned for a long minute or two, he could do the right thing by his children, turn down Reliant, thus ending his active Royal Navy career. He could go on half-pay the rest of his life, live here in Anglesgreen, as farm agent at Dun Roman, perhaps, with an occasional jaunt up to London and the Madeira Club when country living got too boresome.

'No,' he whispered, sadly shaking his head in the negative.

'Sir?' asked Gower, who was still hovering.

'Thinkin' out loud, no matter, Mister Gower,' he told him.

'Right ho, then, Cap'm Lewrie,' Gower said cheerfully, doing a sketchy bow before slouching off to the kitchens.

Lewrie heated the sealing wax and daubed it on the flap of his final letter, then snuffed the candle heater and leaned back, with an ache in the small of his back from sitting hunched forward too long. He rose and arched