The Invasion Year

“I am come to speak with Captain Alan Lewrie,” the very tall and lean older fellow announced, nose-high, and in a very plummy and clench-jawed Oxonian accent. “Might he be aboard, Mister…?”

“I’m Lewrie, sir, And you might be…?” Lewrie casually rejoined with a mystified grin.

The visitor seemed to start at that, and gave Lewrie one of those long, head-to-foot look-overs, then another, as if in dis-belief. It did not help that Lewrie was wearing his third-best hat, suitable only for stormy weather, his shirt sleeves and neck-stock, and sailcloth waist-coat and breeches, white cotton stockings, and an old pair of buckled shoes, whilst the visitor was dressed in silk and satin; his coat was red satin (with the aforementioned square yard of gilt lace), a white silk shirt and waist-coat, white satin breeches, white silk stockings, and shoes as light and insubstantial as a lady’s dancing slippers. Under his over-sized cocked hat with all those feathers, he sported a formal powdered wig, and upon his chest and coat breast, he showed the sash and device of the Order of the Garter. To top off his appearance, he held a long walking-stick with a large gold top, more like a Lord Mayor’s ceremonial mace.

“I am, sir, Sir Harper Strachan, Baron Ludlow, and equerry to the Court of Saint James’s, and His Majesty, King George the Third,” the visitor said as he made a particularly showy “leg” with a flourish of his hat cross his breast.

How’s he keep the wig on? Lewrie wondered; Glue?

“Bugger that! Show us yer tits!” a sailor cried over the mild din of music and chatter.

“Oh,” was all Lewrie could say in response, and whipped off his own hat to make a bow in kind. “Welcome aboard Reliant, milord. Your servant.”

“I have just spoken with Captain Blanding, sir,” Strachan went on, once he’d plopped his hat back on his wig and straightened back up, “to arrange with him his presentation at Court for his investiture in the Order of the Bath, and his baronetcy. The Crown would find it convenient did you be available to present yourself at the same time, sir.”

“Oh, that,” Lewrie gawped, for it had completely flown his ken, the last few months or so, and he had never really considered a knighthood earned. “I’d almost forgotten.”

“Oh… that, sir? Slipped your mind, did it, sir?” Sir Harper bristled, his turkey-wattle jowls quivering, and his drink-veined cheeks reddening. “You hold a knighthood to be of so little moment, sir?”

“Meanin’ that it was so long ago that Captain Blanding and I were informed of the honour, and we’ve been so busy of late, convoyin’ a West Indies trade the last two months,” Lewrie managed to babble in quick explanation. “Think of the expression ‘herdin’ cats,’ sir, and that’ll give ye the best impression of it. Back o’ the mind, that?” he said with a helpless shrug. “Might I offer you some refreshment in my cabins, sir, and-”

“Do your quarters reek less than your ship, Captain Lewrie… which I must say you keep in a slovenly, nigh mutinous manner?” their haughty caller enquired, producing a large paisley silk handkerchief from a side pocket of his coat and pressing it to his nose.

“We’re Out of Discipline, sir.” Lewrie goggled at him. “Can’t allow the people shore liberty, or they’d take ‘leg bail’ and run off, so this is their liberty… short as it’ll be. As for the smells… all ships stink, sir… milord… even though we re-paint, scrub and scour with vinegar, smoke her with tobacco torches…,” he explained, heaving another shrug. “After a time, though… stink happens.”

“Hmpf!” was Sir Harper Strachan’s comment on that, looking about with amazement and outrage to see half-gowned women dancing with tars in the waist; the nanny goat half up on a gun carriage to get at one of the bread bags full of bisquit hung underneath the larboard gangway, and the assorted livestock in the forecastle manger. Even the musicians and the lusty songs seemed to irk him.

It didn’t help that Lewrie’s cats took that moment to arrive on the quarterdeck. Chalky, the younger and spryer white’un, patted at Lewrie’s breeches for attention, then sprang aloft and scaled his leg and waist-coat, to perch teetering on his right shoulder, just as Sir Harper returned his gaze to Lewrie. His mouth plopped open.

“This is Chalky, milord,” Lewrie lamely told him as Chalky put his cheek against Lewrie’s to nuzzle and play-nip. “Came off a French brig in the West Indies in ’98. Nice puss,” Lewrie said as he half-turned his head towards the cat.

Feeling ignored, Toulon wandered up to paw at Lewrie’s leg, too, mewing most plaintively. The Crown equerry stiffened in even greater distaste.

This is not goin’ well, Lewrie told himself.

“That’s Toulon, milord. Evacuated with me when he was a kitten in ’94, so he’s of an age by now,” Lewrie further explained.

Toulon looked Sir Harper over, and ambled over to see if he’d be more amenable to “wubbies.”

“You were sayin’, milord… something about a convenient date?” Lewrie prompted as Toulon began to sniff at Sir Harper’s ankles.

“Ah, yayss,” Strachan drawled, “Captain Blanding has promised to make himself available for the weekly levee, next Tuesday, which will begin at ten of the… damme!” he yelped as Toulon laid a tentative paw on his silk stockings. “Get your creature away from me!”

“Here, Toulon… here, lad,” Lewrie bade, clucking and snapping his fingers. “This coming Tuesday, milord?”

“Yes, this Tuesday next,” Strachan snapped, shuffling away from Toulon, gently shoving with a dainty slipper to shoo him off. “At ten in the morning. In full uniform, and Court dress.”

“Uniform and Court dress, sir? There’s a diff’rence?” Lewrie asked. He was beginning to enjoy rankling the top-lofty shit.

“You will have lodgings in London, Captain Lewrie?” Strachan said. “A letter with the particulars could await you.”

“The Madeira Club, milord… at the corner of Duke and Wigmore Streets. Might I bring someone along with me as a guest?”

“Hoy, Cap’m Lewrie! These look familiar?” Nancy took that unfortunate moment to open her bodice and shake her impressive poonts in his direction, to the cheers of his sailors as they hustled her below.

“Not one of your…!” Sir Harper began, aghast.

“Cats, sir?” Lewrie supplied.

“Whores, I meant to say, such as that… that…!”

“Merely an old acquaintance and ally, sir,” Lewrie told him, wincing and wondering how much worse it could get.

“I dare say,” Strachan sneered with another disdainful sniff.

“There’s my father, sir, Major-General Sir Hugo Saint George Willoughby, retired,” Lewrie said, “who resides in London. At such short notice, I rather doubt one of my brothers-in-law and his wife could attend, but if he could get away from his regiment in time…”

Lewrie would not invite his other brother-in-law, Governour Chiswick, not this side of Hell, anyway, even if he and his wife, Millicent, could bring his daughter, Charlotte, from Anglesgreen in a day. She was too young to appreciate it. He didn’t need his disreputable old school chums, like Clotworthy Chute-who’d most-like fleece a naive peer of his year’s rents, or grope up a lady-in-waiting- or even Peter Rushton, now Viscount Draywick, who sat in Lords and got drunk and diddled regularly and was prone to giggle at the most inappropriate moments. Both his sons were at sea, more’s the pity…

“The levee will include a great many who are to be ennobled or knighted, and will be bringing guests of their own, so it would be best did you limit your own… Sir Hugo Saint George Willoughby, did you say, sir?” Strachan looked as stunned as if he’d just been pole-axed at the knacker’s yard, so stunned that he did not notice Toulon standing up to paw at his silk breeches. “Him?” Stachan goggled.

Damme, but my father does get that reception whenever his name’s mentioned, Lewrie thought with a wry smirk; He’s heard of him, has he?

Strachan, Lord Ludlow, gave Lewrie another of his disdainful up-and-down looks, as if to say that the acorn didn’t fall far from the tree, and was the Crown aware of what a bad bargain they would be making by knighting the son of that rake-hell?