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"Eminently employable, then," Forrester beamed with sudden joy. "Do you not think, uncle?"
"We shall keep you in mind, sir," Sir George vowed.
Jesus, kill me now, and have done, Lewrie prayed! Anything but their clutches! Anything!
"There's Bligh!" someone breathed behind Lewrie's left shoulder, quickly followed by a stifled giggle of mirth. "Poor old fellow," someone else more charitable commented.
He was a little fellow, nothing like the tragic hero he'd been proclaimed when he'd first reached England after the Mutiny. Nothing like the ogre he'd lately been portrayed, either. Despite his recent, and calamitous, downfall in popular opinion, he still drew his throng of admirers. Lewrie joined them. It was a slow morning.
"Read your book, sir," Lewrie toadied, all but simpering. "God, I wish I'd but known you might be here this very day, sir… I'd have fetched it along so you might have inscribed it."
"Kind of you to say so, sir. Quite," Captain Bligh replied, a trifle dubiously, a trifle shyly, half-expecting he was being made the butt of a jape.
"Bad timing, I gathered, sir," Lewrie went on. "Having to wait so long at Otaheiti for the breadfruit plants' growing season. Well, what crew wouldn 't go stale on one, I ask you."
"Delivered properly this time, sir," Bligh declared, firmer in his convictions, now that he saw he still had some admirers. "In Providence, a proper ship, an Indiaman."
"Pity, though," Lewrie shrugged, "Captain Edwards and Pandora. Had their Lordships ordered things the other way 'round… you to go pursue your mutineers, Edwards to fetch the breadfruit…"
Captain Edward Edwards, a taut hand if ever there was one, who made Bligh's easygoing (though unpredictable) ways seem like a saint in comparison, had apprehended several mutineers left behind when the Bounty sailed off for parts unknown. But Edwards had piled Pandora on the coral reefs of Endeavour Straits, and had lost her.
"I predicted dire consequences, ya know," Bligh almost preened by then, feeling more comfortable among sycophantic curiosity seekers. "Told 'em Edwards did not know the navigation of Flinders Passage in the reefs, of Endeavour Straits. Excuse me, sir… but you are…?"
"Lewrie, sir. Alan Lewrie."
"Ah, yes. Well, thankee for your kind opinion, sir. Thankee kindly," Bligh bobbed with a shy smile.
"I suppose you must be going, sir, I will delay you no longer. Off to a new command, I trust?" Lewrie fawned.
"Good day, sir," Bligh snapped suddenly, turned on his heel, and departed in a frosty, insulted huff.
"Bloody hell!" Alan muttered to himself in confusion.
"I shouldn't worry over it much," an unfamiliar lieutenant told him in a whisper. "The court martial only hanged three out often and let the rest off, lenient as possible, didn't they, now. Read Edward Christian's Minutes of the Court Martial, and the scales will balance. Fletcher Christian's brother, don't ye know?" the man sniggered. 'The First Lord, Lord Chatham… I'm told he's issued word he'd only award Bligh with a ship should Hell freeze over. Won't even give him the time of day, is the rumor! No berth to be had with him. Thank the Good Lord."
"So I've…" Lewrie sighed with a wry grin at his toadying.
"Right. Pissed down his back for nought," the other chortled.
"An occupational hazard of ours, though. Is it not, sir?" he posed with a sardonic Lift of one brow, to cover his chagrin over being so toadying. And so obvious at it.
"Oh, it is, indeed, sir!" the other officer agreed heartily, equally taken by the drollery of it all. "Hypocrisy in the service of one's career is no vice at all. One must simply be aware of when, and most importantly, to whom, one is the canting toad. Will you take tea with me, sir?"
By late afternoon, the Waiting Room was just as crowded, though at least a third of its denizens, who hid their impatience (or their dismay) behind poses of bemused boredom, stoic sternness or glum patience, were new arrivals. And Lewrie's name still had not been called. Fearing he'd miss his grand moment to ascend to the Board Room, or at least receive his orders in writing from a harried clerk, he had not even dared take time away to dine, not even as far as the inner courtyard, where one might buy dubious victuals off vendors' carts beyond the curtain wall and portal. His innards were growling by then, much as they had when he was an underfed midshipman. And the gallons of tea he had taken aboard! When a secretary at last announced that the day's business was at an end, he forgot dignity, and notions of rank, to outrun half a dozen dozy post-captains to "the jakes," where he passed water prodigiously as a cart horse, for a rather long time.
Tomorrow, he told himself, as he plodded, swell-footed after standing since breakfast, for Whitehall Steps and a boat back to his lodgings. Tomorrow'll be my day.
Chapter 2
The Admiralty's letter had been penned on the 20th, and Lewrie had received it on the 22nd, arriving in person on the morning of the 23rd. Yet, by the morning of February 1, his "tomorrow" had yet to come. To save money, they had removed to Willis' Rooms, in New Bond Street, down at the fashionable end, closest to his old haunts around St. James'. Closer by road to Whitehall, too, so Alan could hire a one-horse hack to and from, for less than his ferryman cost daily.
He was completely fagged out, again, of course. Caroline had delighted him with yet another night of honeymoon passion, and that after a public-subscription ball at Ranelagh Gardens; a night of fine food, music alternating between patriotic and lushly romantic, and an almost palpable aura of frenetic enthusiasm. Young men in uniforms had suddenly sprang from everywhere, and young ladies to match, torn between tears of separation and last-opportunity wantonness. Caroline had come down to their common parlour in a new ball gown, a caprice of the times, like some Grecian goddess sprung from the frieze of a precious, ancient urn. Her gown was closer fitting, almost a sheath, with fewer petticoats, and scandalously hemmed above the toes, almost to her ankles, with an artfully ragged turn-back to reveal the lace of one petticoat. Her waistline was very high, her bodice low-scooped to reveal decolletage, sleeves short and gauzy, all but baring arms and shoulders. And about her neck she wore a red-velvet riband choker. What fixed his intense, open-mouthed stare was her hair-it had turned into a tangled nest of Medusas, tousled, ratted, snarled and dangled in crimped ringlets.
"What the blazesT he'd gawped. Caroline had turned herself into a cross between a Dago peasant and a Covent Garden whore who'd had a rather hard night of it!
"All the rage," Caroline had chuckled, pirouetting for him. "It is 'a la victime,' dearest. Like the French aristocrats in the tumbrils going to the guillotine? The riband… for poor, beheaded King Louis and Marie Antoinette. You… you do not care for it?" she asked hesitantly, losing her gay demeanour and her confidence.
"My word!" he gasped. "It's so…" He had been about to say that he did not, in the least, care for his wife to go out so scandalously attired, sure she would be hooted, and dunged, by the Mob. Yet seven years "Active Service" with her, standing "Watch-And-Watch" on their quarterdeck, warned him he'd crush her if he told her what he really thought. Hoping such clothes were indeed "all the rage," he decided to brazen it out and agree to deem it Fashion.
And…
Damme if she don't look fetchin', like a whole new woman, Alan had thought; fetchin' enough to eat… on the spotl Wanton, bold and brazen. Always been favourites o' mine, God help me. No sober-sided matron tonight! Aye, I think I do like it, after all. Brand new, as smart as paint… an' triced up like a present, to be unwrapped.
"Caroline!" he'd said at last, beaming forced, but total, approval. "It's so different, you look so…! So deuced handsome. Lovely! Surely, I'm the luckiest man in England tonight.
Gawd, come 'ere, you. Let me shew you how much I adore it. So artfully… uhm, artless!"
And to the titters and blushes of the house staff at Willis', her maid's and Cony's smiles, he had taken her in his arms and given her a long, rewarding kiss, right there in the public rooms.
And his fears had been groundless. At the ball, there had been ladies, some with barely a jot of Caroline's sublime face and form, in a la victime mode, some carrying it so far as to look as bedraggled as Irish peasants. And flesh; more flesh bared that night by younger ladies (and high-priced courtesans) than a man might see had he owned a "knocking-shop," all of which inflamed Lewrie's lustful humours.
They'd drunk Frog champagne as if it were a patriotic duty to expunge the last trace from the British Isles, danced together round after round, had circulated 'round the rotunda, talking too loudly, laughing too gaily, greeting old acquaintances. And had gone home, after a midnight collation, for that longed-for "unwrapping."
"It's war!" The rumour began, just about eleven in the morning. The traffic in messengers through the lobby and foyer, up the stairs to the Board Room and offices, increased; and those couriers sent out with despatch cases and bundles of papers were in more haste than was their usual wont. Elderly Admiral Howe made an appearance, almost arm in arm with Lord Chatham, the First Lord, on the way upstairs, whispering and frowning grave, dyspeptic stoicism.
"It's war with the Frogs!" Hopefuls began to gossip, breathless with barely subdued excitement, their eyes bright as famished hounds at the prospect of scraps.
"Heard the latest?" one boasted, as if he had. " France marched into Holland yesterday. Their ambassador's packing his traps. We'll declare by midafternoon. War at last! Employment at last!"
"No, no… 'twas Austria," decried a second officer, refuting that round of news when it got to him. "Prussia, Naples… that last decree from Paris, 'bout supporting republican insurrections anywhere in Europe… they're all coming in as a coalition, 'cause of that."
"Did they march into the Austrian Netherlands yet?"
"It'd be about time, should you ask me. There's their General Coburg, with a real army…"
"Finest in Europe," opined several together.
"… sitting on their hands nigh on a whole year," continued the speaker, "feared of a tagrag-and-bobtail horde o' Frog peasants-led by former corporals, so pray you-'stead o' kickin' their arses out o' their territories a week after the invasion."
"We should have declared when France took Antwerp," another anonymous strategist declared strongly. "Why, we might as well give up the Continental, and the Baltic trade, else. What's next on the Frogs' menu? Amsterdam… Copen-haven… Hamburg?"
Finally a commodore, fresh from the seat of power in the Board Room, came down the stairs, and was almost mobbed for information. He held up a hand to silence their fervent queries.
"The true facts which obtain, sirs…" he announced solemnly. "Very early this morning, His Majesty's Brig o' War Childers, standing off-and-on without the harbour of Brest, was fired upon by French batteries. Word has reached us by the semaphore towers that she was struck several times by heavy round-shot. Childers will come in, to display her damage, and the French round-shot… in her timbers, and upon her decks."
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