The Invasion Year

Portland Bight.

With Hugh Beauman drowned in a shipwreck in the Tagus river entrances in Portugal, the parents long-before retired to England with all their wealth, the Beaumans’ little empire had collapsed, absorbed by an host of indifferent others, their newspaper defunct, and their shipping business owned by others. Oh, there were still some distant kin on the island, along with forner employees and business partners, but without Hugh Beauman to direct the hatred, Lewrie was almost as safe as houses; the Beauman “syndicate” had evaporated, so Lewrie could dare to depart Reliant for shopping, and a shore breakfast, as he had this morning in a rare, and brief, respite from blockading duties.

Modeste, Reliant, Cockerel, and Pylades still cruised together as a squadron. There had been a week at anchor following the French surrender at Cap Francois, then a three-month stint at sea, prowling round the isle of Hispaniola, whilst the ships of the line and frigates of the Jamaica Station stayed busy invading more French island colonies, hoping for an encounter with a relieving French squadron.

Christmas and Boxing Day had come and gone, then New Year’s Day of 1804, then Epiphany, Plough Monday, Hilary Term days for courts and colleges, and Candlemas, and, after all the excitement of the previous year, it was all rather pacific, and deadly-boresome. The newly independent Haitians did not try to export their slave rebellion to the rest of the West Indies, the weak French lodgements in the Spanish half of Hispaniola seemed to have given up on any attempt to flee to France, and the Spanish, the Dons, were behaving like their usual selves; that is to say, moribund. After getting stung rather badly as French allies they had drawn in their horns, and showed no signs of wanting any more to do with war.

With hurricane season over, the weather in the West Indies was delightful; with the heat of Summer dissipated, Fever Season was also gone, for a while, and it was all “claret and cruising” through steady Trade Winds, clear, sunny days, and only now and then a half-gale or afternoon squall. It was so very pleasant that Alan Lewrie was of two moods: either bored nigh to tears, or fretful that Dame Fortune would remember that it was her job to kick him in his arse, now and again… every time he felt smug and satisfied. Or had too much idle time.

During such lulls as this, without the heady spur of adventure and action, Lewrie could become, well… distracted. It was said that “idle hands are the Devil’s workshop,” and well Lewrie knew it! Given a week or so in port for re-victualling, replenishment, and re-arming, with the pleasures of a thriving harbour town a short row off in both ear-shot and eye-shot, and, given how little a frigate captain had to do when said frigate was both at anchor and flying the “Easy” pendant to show that she was Out of Discipline to allow her people to rut with their “temporary wives” or prostitutes… when aboard, able to see it and hear it as sailors and doxies coupled between the guns on the oak deck planks, danced, cavorted, and sang, well!

It did not help Lewrie’s restless feelings to know that Lieutenant Geoffrey Westcott, his First Officer, had indeed discovered for himself a most lissome jeune fille from among the horde of civilian French refugees. Whether she was truly the penniless daughter of one of the most distinguished and wealthiest families of Saint Domingue, as was alleged, a corporal’s widow, or a whore tainted with the one in 128 parts of Negro blood, a sang mele, and still considered Black in the old regime, she was hellish- handsome. Light brown, almost chestnut hair, enormous brown eyes, a fine brow and a swan-like neck, pouty lips, and a face nigh gamin or elfin in its lovelieness… which put Lewrie dangerously in mind of his former mistress in the Mediterranean, Phoebe Aretino, or that murderous pirate-minx Charite de Guilleri. Phoebe had been a teen prostitute in the port city of Toulon during the British invasion of 1794, but was now “Contessa Phoebe” in Paris, the queen of perfumes. Charite de Guilleri had been a French Creole belle who, with her brothers and cousin, and some old privateers, had turned both pirates and revolutionaries with the purpose of freeing New Orleans and Louisiana from the Spanish; she had shot Lewrie in the chest, once, when he’d run them down and ended their game on Grand Terre Isle, at the mouth of Barataria Bay. Before that, they had been lovers… and damned if both of them had not been grand lovers! Which remembrance did Lewrie’s equilibrium no good, at all.

How could one still evince a lusty itch for a young woman who’d hunted him down and tried to kill him for good, and had might as well have fired the shot that had slain his wife, Caroline, during the Peace of Amiens, in France in 1802?

* * *

Lewrie returned aboard Reliant just as Three Bells of the Forenoon were struck. The side-party was mostly the fully-uniformed Marines, the requisite number of sailors in shore-going finery, and those Midshipmen unfortunate enough to stand Harbour Watch; officers in port did not, and what Lieutenants Spendlove and Merriman were doing below in the gun-room to while away their idle time, Lewrie could have cared less. The crewmen of the Harbour Watch, those on the gangways and the weather decks, doffed their hats and stood facing him for a minute or so, then went back to their few duties, envying their mates below on the gun-deck, where they sported with their women.

“Anything out of the ordinary to report, Mister Grainger?” he asked the senior-most of the pair of Mids who stood the watch, a lad of fifteen.

“Two… two of the, ehm… women, got into an argument, sir,” Grainger reported with a blush. “Bosun’s Mate Mister Wheeler separated them, and ordered them off the ship, at One Bell, sir.”

“Slashing away with belaying pins, they did, sir!” Midshipman Rossyngton, who was only thirteen, piped up. “Stark naked, both, sir!”

“Sorry I missed it,” Lewrie said with a grin.

“Well, ehm… neither of them were what one would call ‘fetching,’ sir,” Mr. Rossyngton ventured to say, with a precocious leer. “Rather old, and… fubsy, they were.”

“Not t’yer taste, Mister Rossyngton?” Lewrie teased.

“Well, ehm…,” the lad flummoxed, turning as red as Grainger.

“Beg pardons, young gentlemen… Cap’m… but, there’s a signal hoist aboard Modeste,” one of the Master’s Mates, Eldridge, interrupted, reminding them of their proper duties. He, his mate Nightinggale, and the Sailing Master, Mr. Caldwell, were their primary tutors in navigation, and an host of other seamanly work.

“Sorry, sir!” Grainger gawped, turning even redder, if that was possible, hurriedly raising his telescope to read it. “It is… ‘Have Mail,’ sir!” he crowed with an expectant “Christmas Is Coming” glee. “And… our number, and ‘Captain Repair On Board.’ ”

“Buggery,” Lewrie muttered, half to himself. He had hoped for a quiet morning to digest his succulent shore breakfast, sip on some of his cold tea collation, catch up with naval paperwork, play with the cats, perhaps read a chapter or two of a new book, and… take a good long nap, but… “Mister Rossyngton, pass word for my Cox’n and boat crew. Smartly, now!”

Will they be in any shape t’row me over to Modeste? he had to wonder as he waited. He had taken his gig ashore at Seven Bells of the Morning Watch, assuring Desmond and the others that he would hire a bum-boatman for his return, so they could join in the sport belowdecks.

Sure enough, here came Liam Desmond, his Cox’n, still donning his short dark blue jacket, his tarred hat askew, and his long-time mate, Patrick Furfy, right behind him, still trying to do up the buttons of his slop-trousers… and reeling a bit.

“Sorry, lads, but I’m called away to the flagship,” Lewrie told them as they hurriedly filed down the man-ropes and battens to the gig. “Hope I didn’t interrupt anything too much fun.”

That apology raised a stricken smile or two; most of them had been in full-throated song, nipping at smuggled half-pints of rum, and halfway to “connubial” bliss with their “wives” when called to duty.

* * *

All three frigates had sent boats to Modeste to lay hands upon their precious letters, newspapers, and packages. Pylades’s boat was commanded by a Midshipman, but