The Invasion Year

and gazes were lowered, but… some once-only guests like Lewrie did peek, as did the gossip-mongers, looking for a sign that King George was still in decent health, or fading fast; and to be sure, members of the Privy Council and the under-ministers of the latest Pitt administration searched for clues regarding the continuation of the present monarch, and their prestigious offices.

Well, he looks sane, Lewrie told himself; but, there’s no real way t’tell, is there? Whilst he was still in the West Indies, one of his father’s letters had noted that King George had opened Parliament in February by addressing the body as “my Lords and Peacocks”! Since Lewrie had never really seen him in the flesh before-a parade of fast-trotting royal coaches jingling through St. James’s Square where Lewrie had grown up (admittedly not the good side of the square, much like his family’s repute!), a hat in a window, and a glance of a pudgy and serenely bland face for an eyeblink-he had only the portraits in the gallery of Ranelagh Gardens to go by, and if he’d met him in a shop in the Strand, he wouldn’t have known him from Adam!

The King was looking a tad rickety. He’d always been a hefty fellow, as rotund as the late Dr. Samuel Johnson, as Captain Blanding and his brood, but now the King’s scarlet-trimmed and gold-laced dark blue suitings looked as loose and free as a flagging jib.

“Queen’s ill again?” he heard someone whisper. “Where’s she?”

“And, here comes Prinny,” another muttered.

“His Royal Highness, the Prince of Wales!” the major-domo cried.

Down the crowd went again in bows and curtsys, as a lesser fan-fare sounded.

“Be the Regent soon, you mark my words,” someone snidely hissed.

“God help us, then,” a woman whispered back. And, once the King and the Prince of Wales had passed them, and they could stand upright again, the same woman remarked, “The Prime Minister’s in no better condition. He’s played out.”

“Well, we’ve Lord Canning and Lord Castlereagh,” her companion pointed out. “And a pack of ninnies. The William Pitt government now consists of William, and Pitt, and the scribblers,” he japed.

Sir Hugo’s letter had expressed concerns that when William Pitt had returned to office, he’d refused to find a position in his ministry for Addington, whom he’d supplanted, and refused his own cousin and friend, Lord Grenville. Pitt had even angered the Navy by turning out Admiral Lord St. Vincent, “Old Jarvy,” as First Lord of the Admiralty, just as his campaign to root out corruption, malfeasance, graft, and double-dealing in the Victualling Board and HM Dockyards had begun to solve some of the long-standing problems. He’d replaced him with a man who could have cared less, Henry Viscount Melville, Lord “Business As Usual”! Government was run by an un-talented pack of nobodys.

“Looks a tad off his feed, don’t he?” Sir Hugo whispered with a raspy sarcasm. “Though Prinny’s bulkin’ up nicely, good as a prime steer.”

“Where’d ye find the wine?” Lewrie asked.

“For you, that’s for after,” his father rejoined. “No matter do I get squiffy, but you… you’re the trick-performin’ pony in this raree-show.”

“Why’d ye bring up our Harrow bomb-plot?” Lewrie further asked.

Long ago, Lewrie at a callow sixteen, and a clutch of his fellow rake-hells at Harrow had decided to emulate Guy Fawkes’s plot to blow up Parliament, and had obtained the materials with which to lash back at the school governor by blowing up his carriage house. They’d been caught right after, of course, Lewrie with the smouldering slow-match in his hands, and expelled. It was a feat to be dined out upon, but not a fact to be blurted out to a superior officer who might imagine that Lewrie still harboured pyrotechnical urges.

“Gawd, you’re clueless!” Sir Hugo said with a snort. “See how Miss Blanding was makin’ cow’s-eyes? Ye told me they were stayin’ in London t’find her a suitable match. Want t’be that poor bugger?”

“Oh, for God’s sake, they couldn’t…!” Lewrie objected.

“You’re better off than most they’ll find,” Sir Hugo sniggered. “And a bloody hero, t’boot, with a knighthood and a bank full o’ prize-money. Well, God help ’em with that project, and pity the poor fool saddled with her, soon as she pups an heir or two, and ends as round as her parents. Best they know your warts, right off.”

“Captain Lewrie… sir,” Strachan intruded with an impatient schoolmaster’s “vex” to his languid purr. “Might you find the time to join us, sir? All are in place but for you.”

“Oh… coming,” Lewrie replied, following the equerry to the middle of the carpet to join the others. He stood by Captain Blanding, took a deep breath to settle himself, and did some last-minute tugging at his shirt cuffs and the bottom of his waist-coat to settle them.

“A grand moment,” Blanding whispered to him, grinning like Puck. “A proud moment, nigh the finest in my life, Lewrie!” He was almost overcome with emotion and awe of the occasion. “Well,” he quibbled, “there was my wedding day, and the arrival of the children, but… to be so honoured!”

“And Rear-Admiral sure t’come, soon after, sir?” Lewrie hinted.

“Oh well, aye, but… to stand before His Majesty, our Soveriegn, to converse with him!” Blanding went on, looking as if he would keel over in a faint, or whirl like an Ottoman Dervish and snap his fingers in glee.

Thud-thud-thud from a ceremonial mace, and a richly toned voice was calling for Captain Stephen Blanding of His Britannic Majesty’s Navy to come forward. For a stout fellow, Blanding did most of that ritual well; deep bow atop the third rosette in the carpet from the dais, advance, stop, and bow again; it was the kneeling part that gave him a spot of bother.

A senior courtier stood by King George to hold an unrolled parchment for him to read from. “Captain Blanding… Captain Stephen Blanding… in honour of your stellar career as a Commission Sea Officer in our Royal Navy, and in grateful recognition of your splendid victory over a French squadron at the Battle of the Chandeleur Isles, we name thee Knight and Baronet,” the King intoned, stumbling a bit over the words as if he missed his spectacles. Down came the sword to tap Blanding on each shoulder, and it was done. There were some words exchanged that hardly anyone ten feet away could catch, then Captain Blanding was up and bowing and backing away for the last bow on the proper rosette, and he half-turned to Lewrie, gaping with joy and with actual tears in his eyes.

Like he just got healed by Jesus, Lewrie thought, finding this ceremony, and the most un-godlike appearance of the King, a bit of a let-down. Blanding might be reduced to a quaking aspic, but for himself, Lewrie could only chide himself for a cynic and a sham.

“Captain Alan Lewrie, of His Britannic Majesty’s Navy, will come forward!” the courtier intoned.

Third rosette; Nice carpet, Lewrie thought, looking down at it as he made his formal “leg”; I like the colours. Then it was head-up and stride forward, looking over both the King and the Prince of Wales.

A bit drifty, Lewrie thought of the former, noting how George III was turning his head about like a man looking for where he had left his hat; Bored t’death, was his thought of the Prince. Was he got up too early this mornin’, or do his nails really need a cleanin’?

The last bow, then the kneeling, and the lowering of his head, but… he really was a tad curious to witness what was about to come, so he looked up without thinking… hoping that King George would be a mite more careful with how he slung that sword about.

“Captain Alan Lew… Lewrie,” the King began, leaning to peer at the ornate document the courtier held out for him, “in honour of your stellar career as a Commission Sea Officer in our Royal Navy…”

Christ, can’t anybody pronounce it right? Lewrie thought with a wince; It ain’t like he’s a foreigner, is it?

“… grateful recognition of your inestimable part which led to victory over a French squadron at the Chandeleur Isles,” the King said in a firm voice, though leaning over to squint myopically at the parchment the courtier held, then leaned back to conclude his words. “We do now name thee Knight and Baronet,” he said, looking out over the hall, over Lewrie’s head.

“Ahem?” the courtier tried to correct.

What the bloody…? Lewrie gawped; How’s that? Did he just…?