The French Admiral

'Another missive for you, Mister Sedge, in a fair round hand, from New York. Scented too, I swear.'

'Gimme that,' Sedge snapped, eager for the letter from some female admirer, and not a man to be trifled with at that moment. He gathered up his few communications from those dear to him and went into his cabin.

Alan decided to save Lucy's letters for later; they would take some deciphering, anyway, since the little mort had the world's worst skill at spelling. He would tackle Pilchard's letter first.

'You missed one, Mister Lewrie,' David Avery said, digging into the sack. He held up a large and thick letter, almost a rival to the long, continued sea-letters that Alan wrote between spells of duty. David sniffed at it to the delight of the other midshipmen, who were pawing through their own correspondence. 'Damme if this one ain't scented, too. From Charleston.'

'Ah?' Alan said, unwilling to be drawn.

'And it's not from Lady Jane's.' David grinned innocently.

'Gimme, then,' Alan said eagerly, reaching for it, but David held it further away and aloft for a second. 'Kick your backside if you don't, you ugly Cornish pirate.'

'Very well, then,' David said, making to hand it over once more but drawing it back at the last second. Alan grabbed his wrist and took it.

'While you tell our newlies of Lady Jane's, I shall read this,' Alan said, smiling to let David know there were no hard feelings. 'Boys, I recommend you listen attentively to Mister Avery's tale of sport. You could learn a good lesson from it.'

He disappeared into his small dog-box cabin and shut the door, flung himself down on the thin mattress of his bunk and opened the seal of the Charleston letter first. Pilchard could go hang for awhile longer. It was from Caroline, informing him of their new address, of how her father was improving now that Governour and Burgess were on their way to Charleston to bring the survivors of their detachment home to add to the garrison and try and raise a new force of riflemen. He was more excited than he would have expected to be reading her carefully formed words and seeing how sensibly she formed her thoughts and expressed herself; he saw-nothing so formal and stilted as to make him twist his tongue trying to figure it out, but everything straightforward and plain, as though she were talking to him familiarly.

There was a lot of teasing, just shy of saying something fond but twisting the sentiment into japery, skirting about what she really might have wished to say to him. It raised a warm glow in him anyway, and he thought of her fondly, scratching at his crotch and grinning in delight.

It had been scented, with the same light, fresh, and clean aroma that he remembered from their one embrace aboard ship, a citrus sort of Hungary Water overlaid with a redolence of some unidentifiable flower. He folded her letter up after reading it through three times, to save it for later. He opened Pilchard's. It was dated nearly nine months earlier.

'You bastard!' he shrieked, beside himself with sudden anger, nearly concussing himself on the low deck beam overhead his berth as he sat up quickly.

It was Pilchard's sad duty to inform him that his father had had second thoughts about the extravagant sum of one hundred guineas a year as his remittance and that Sir Hugo was suspending the annuity, effective January of 1782. That meant that he would not be getting any more money from home and would have to live on the twenty- five pounds, four shillings of a master's mate, less a pound a month for provisions and whatever he purchased from the purser's stores, which meant just about all of it. He already owed Cheatham near fifteen pounds already.

The Yorktown business had reduced his kit horribly, and he had pledged another part of the annuity to tailors ashore in English Harbor for new uniforms and shoes. He could always dig down into his secret money from the Ephegenie, but it was more the thought that counted.

Sir Hugo's excuse was that from what he had read in the Chronicle, Alan was prospering enough from all the prizes taken and no longer needed to be supported. In short, he was on his own bottom now, and must stand or fall as a man with no crutch from home. It was for his own good.

'Lying shit!' Alan swore. 'It's for your own good! You've spent yourself into a hole and it's cut me off or debtor's prison for you! Damme, what did I do to get such a father?'

Still, the idea of his father, his half-sister, and his butt-fucking half-brother Gerald turfed out into the street was cheering, if they had fallen afoul of creditors. Alan had no idea how much money the Willoughbys had; they weren't related to the Willoughbys who counted in the scheme of things. There had always seemed more than enough, but only Heaven knew where it came from, or where it went that he did not see.

There was a knock on his thin slat and canvas door, and he snatched it open to reveal the purser's assistant, the Jack in the Bread Room.

'Pusser wants ta see ye, sir. 'Is complamints, an' could ya join 'im in the spirit store, sir?'

'I shall be there directly, thank you,' Alan said, shrugging off his foul mood. He dressed quickly in his new uniform and went out to the steep ladder that led to the orlop, then aft to the locked compartments in the stern that held the wine and brandy for the officers' mess and the captain's steward.

'Sit ye down, Mister Lewrie,' Cheatham said, looking up from a stack of papers he held on a rough fold-down desk at which it appeared he had been doing inventory of Navy Victualing Board issue spirits; rum, Miss Taylor, and Black Strap. 'Have a cup of cheer, my boy.'

'I'll take a cup, but there's damned little to cheer about,' Alan groused, taking a seat on a wine keg. Cheatham poured from a bottle into a clean glass. 'Um, this is quite good. Not for the hands, I take it.'

'Something I found in port last week,' Cheatham said, putting away his quill and ink pot. 'Wardroom stuff. I have here some information about you, Mister Lewrie. From my brother at Coutts' Bank and your solicitor. Wondrous and strange things have been going on in London since your departure for Sea Service.'

'I don't have a solicitor, sir,' Alan said, mystified, but stirring in anticipation. 'Perhaps I need one, though. My father has cut me off. Not a penny more for me. Without a mate's pay, I'd be begging rations.'

'Where did you hear that?'

Alan explained the letter from Pilchard.

'And when was it dated?'

'March of last year.'

'Ah ha, just about the time things got interesting, according to Jemmy.' Cheatham smiled serenely. 'Your father had to cut you off, for he no longer had a groat to send you. He is in considerable difficulties.'

'He is!' Alan beamed in sudden and total joy. He took a deep breath or two, then let out a whoop of glee loud enough to echo off the hull, piercing enough to startle Red Indians. 'The bastard got his comeuppance at last! How? When did it happen? Did he lose everything?'

'Slowly now, let me explain this at its own pace, for it's rather complicated a legal and personal matter,' Cheatham said. 'My brother Jemmy went to work discovering your background after I bade him do so, and he has found some wondrous interesting facts. First of all, as to your heritage and the background of the Lewrie family. It seems that in the winter of 1762, your mother, Elizabeth, then 22 years of age, was in London for exposure at a season, with close relatives, and met your father, at that time Captain Sir Hugo St. George Willoughby, just back from service on Gibraltar, where he had won his knighthood in service with a distinguished foot regiment, the Fourth, King's Own. Now, there are under English common law two separate and distinct parts to a marriage, as the law would say, de future, which are the spousals in which a couple pledge public affirmation of their mutual agreement to be wed, which can take form as the banns published in the parish or a short mutual statement in the presence of witnesses that they shall at a future time take the other as husband or wife. The witnesses may be summoned to a court of law, and the exchange of gifts and love letters may be used as proof of their intent. The second form, the nuptials, is termed de praesenti, and is usually celebrated by a certifiable churchman.'

'You're losing me, Mister Cheatham,' Alan said, his mind already in full yawn, wishing to skip over the legal mystifications and get to the existence of a Lewrie estate… and how much it could be.

'Patience, my boy, patience, and all shall be discovered to you in full measure,' Cheatham cautioned. 'In 1753, Hawkinge's Marriage Act was passed in Parliament to do away with such scandals as the Fleet St. wedding chapels to save young girls from being robbed by unscrupulous suitors, so that a marriage ceremony with an officiating clergyman is now recognized as necessary to settle all legal questions. Otherwise, two people could leap out of bed, swear themselves wed before witnesses, and it would assign the husband coverture over whatever estate the young lady possessed for the rest of their lives. The Ecclesiastical Courts had the very devil of a time with complaints before this law. But, and this is a very important but, a spousal de futuro is as