Agamemnon thought Clytemnestra'd be glad t'see him, too, Lewrie sourly told himself as he alit on his own land for the first time in years; wonder if I should tell Cassandra t'wait in the carriage, like he did. And it came to him, a most apt snatch of classical Greek play that he'd stumbled over in his school-days, from Agamemnon, in point of fact:
It is evil and a thing of terror when a wife
sits in the house forlorn with no man by, and hears
rumours that like a fever die to break again.
CHAPTER NINE
He thought it good policy to knock, not just barge in. It took a long two minutes, though, before anyone responded to the rapping of his doorknocker. A sour-looking older woman in a sack gown and mob cap opened the door, looked him up and down as she might inspect a drunken, reeling house-breaker, and in a pinched-nostriled and pursed-lipped impatient way, haughtily enquired, "Yes? And what is it that you want of this house, sir?"
"I live here…… It's mine" Lewrie snarled back. "Step lively and tell Mistress Lewrie that Captain Lewrie's home," he said, walking past the mort, swirling off his boat-cloak, and sailing his gilt-laced cocked hat at the hall tree. "Now?" Lewrie prompted the woman who was balking in prim outrage. "Devil take it… hulloa, the house!" Lewrie bellowed in his best quarterdeck voice. "Anyone to home?" He barely had time to take in the black-and-white chequered marble of his foyer, the family portraits on the walls, the twin Venetian bombй chests at either side of the staircase, before chaos befell him.
First, bugling in alarm, came a setter belonging to his elder son, Sewal-lis, closely escorted by a fluffy, yapping ball of fur he thought was a Pomeranian, with his younger son, Hugh, galloping down the stairs and squealing in eleven-year-old glee, whooping like a Red Indian!
"You're home, oh, you're home!" Hugh cried, all but tackling his papa. "Home for Christmas, huzzah!"
With Sewallis, ever a much more staid lad, now fourteen, came a second setter, sniffing arseholes with the first and circling about the reunion in a quandary whether to defend the house or go into paroxysms of delight. The fluff-ball, the Pomeranian, had no doubts about the matter; he would continue to yap, growl, and go for the boots of the intruder… once he'd worked up the nerve.
"Sewallis, give us a kiss, lad," Lewrie bade, arms outstretched to give his eldest a warm hug. "Best Christmas ever, ain't it? All of us home, for once? Damme, but ye've grown! You, too, Hugh. Two fine young gentlemen, ye've turned out t'be."
"What did you bring us for Christmas, father?" Hugh asked with an impish look.
"Me… peace… and a waggon-load o' presents," Lewrie assured him. "Where's Charlotte? Where's my little Charlotte, hey? And, can someone shut this wee hair-ball up?" he added as the Pomeranian at last worked up enough nerve to nip at his left boot, and get shoved by a swift leg thrust.
Just in time for his daughter to appear on the landing and let out an outraged squeal of alarm to see her beloved lap-yapper be assailed. She came dashing downstairs to scoop the little dog up in her arms, quickly step back a few paces, and glare accusingly.
"Charlotte, there ye are, darlin'," Lewrie said. "Won't ya come and give your papa a welcomin' kiss?"
"You hurt my dog!" she cried, cradling it like a baby; a madly barking, squirming, bloodthirsty little baby yearning for his throat.
"I never, dearest, he was…," Lewrie objected, then quieted as his wife descended the stairs, seemingly in no great hurry to welcome her husband back from the wars, and the sea. "Caroline," he said in a much soberer taking. "I'm home for Christmas."
"For so we see, my dear," Caroline coolly responded, both arms folded across her chest. "Your only letter did not inform us of just when you'd appear. When your affairs in London would be done."
That citron-sour housekeeper came down the stairs to stand near her mistress, still scowling as fierce as a Master-At-Arms might at a defaulter due at Captain's Mast for his fifth Drunk on Watch.
Ouch! Lewrie thought, striving manful not to wince at the chill.
"Your timing is impeccable, though," Caroline continued, with a tad of relenting welcome. "Supper will be ready in an hour."
Desmond and Furfy came bustling in at that awkward moment, hands full of sea-bags and carpet satchels; the waggoner followed with a sea-chest, and the dogs went silly once more.
"Uhm… this is my man, Liam Desmond, Caroline… children," Lewrie told them, "My Cox'n since we fought the L'Uranie frigate in the South Atlantic. His mate, Patrick Furfy, who'll be tending to the horses and such… He's a way with animals… "
Sure enough, Furfy did, for right after he'd dropped his burden he whistled and clapped his hands, and the two setters trotted to him, tails a'wag, tongues lolling, and their hind-quarters squirming in joy as he cosseted them with soft words, pets, and crooning Irish phrases.
"We've a stableman already, husband, so…," Caroline began.
"Then we've another, dear," Lewrie baldly told her.
"Oh, very well," Caroline resignedly replied, stiffening a bit. "Mistress Calder, pray show Captain Lewrie's men to his chambers."
"Yes, Missuz," the older mort said, her mouth rat-trapping.
"We've the dray to unload, as well," Lewrie said.
"Then pray do so through the kitchen doors, and do not let any more heat out through the front," Caroline instructed.
"I'll pay the coachee and have the waggon shifted," Lewrie said, hiding a sigh. "Quite a lot of dainties… liqueurs, caviar t'stow in the pantry?" he tempted her, hoping for some enthusiasm.
"Mistress Calder will show them where to put things," Caroline said, turning to head "aft" for the kitchens herself.
"The waggoner'll stay over for the night," Lewrie told her.
"I'll tell cook to lay three more places in the scullery," she announced, then turned and departed with nary a hug, a kiss, or even a a promise of one.
Petronius had it right, Lewrie sadly thought, recalling another snatch of Latin poetry: "Reproach and Love, all in a moment, For Hercules himself would be a Torment!"
An hour later and it was time for supper. Lewrie had hung his uniforms and civilian suitings in the armoire, stowed his shirts and such in a chest-of-drawers, and had made a fair start on emptying his heavy sea-chest… in a guest bed-chamber at the end of the upstairs hall right above his library and office. He'd borne his swords down to that office-library, just in time to witness Mrs. Calder remove the last of the linen covers from wing chairs and settee, and stoke up the fireplace… as if in his absence, the only thing used there was the desk and the leather-padded chair behind it, for farm accounting. Desmond followed him in with his weapons; his breech-loading Ferguson rifle-musket, the long-barrelled fusil musket, the rare Girandoni air-powered rifle, twin to the one that had almost killed him at Barataria Bay in Spanish Louisiana, and his boxed pistols.
From the stairs onwards, his children had followed him as close at his heels as Sewallis's setters, the boys goggling at the firearms and swords. Lewrie hung his French grenadier-pattern hanger above the mantel and stood his hundred-guinea presentation small-sword in a wooden rack, along with five more small-swords of varying worth and quality that he'd captured from the French.