Might as well go along with it, he decided; they won’t offer twice, and… won’t this put my father’s nose outta joint? Think o’ what Harry Embleton’ll make of it, or my brother-in-law Governour?
“Wet him down, instanter!” Lt. Gilbraith was crying, calling for more wine. “Won’t be official ’til your presentations at Court, but, perhaps we could make a start at modest celebration, what?”
“I believe we could, Jemmy,” Captain Blanding heartily agreed, lifting his glass in Lewrie’s direction. “Sir Alan?”
“Sir Stephen!” Lewrie responded, though he lacked the twinkle that danced in Blanding’s eyes.
CHAPTER NINE
A few more celebratory glasses of Rhenish put paid to Lewrie’s plans for his late morning. In addition to the routine paperwork of a fighting ship, there was a new pile of directives from the Admiralty to be read through, initialed, filed away, or answered; he, and almost every Midshipman he had ever known from his early days, had been laid over a gun to “kiss the gunner’s daughter” for the sin of reading one’s personal mail, first, and neglecting Words From On High… even were those words corrected sailing directives for the safe navigation of the Yellow Sea, which 99 percent of the Royal Navy would never even get close to, much less transit. To his cats’ dismay, Lewrie and his clerk, James Faulkes, spent the rest of the Forenoon sorting it all out, and penning responses, too intent to play with them, shooing them off the day cabin desk and protecting Faulkes’s feathered quill pens.
The musicians had struck up “The Bowld Soldier Boy” at half past eleven, at Seven Bells, and the Purser, Mr. Cadbury, Marine Lieutenant Simcock, and the Purser’s Assistant/Clerk, Bewley (better known as the Jack-In-The-Breadroom), had escorted the painted rum cask on deck for the mid-day issue; Faulkes had gone antsy to miss it, forcing Lewrie to suspect that it was not just rejected love that had driven Faulkes to sea.
“Well, I think that should do it, Faulkes,” Lewrie said at last, as the very last reply was sanded to dry the ink, carefully folded and sealed, then addressed. “Sorry it took so long. You might visit the galley and see Mister Cooke… he’s always a pint of something hidden away. Did you miss the issue, he’ll allow you a nip.”
“Thank you, sir, and I shall,” Faulkes said, departing.
“Well, lads?” Lewrie invited to his cats, who sprang atop the desk to prowl, bow their backs, yawn, and stretch, then nuzzle at his hands. “You just can’t play with the pretty feathered pens, it isn’t-”
“Hands is being piped to Mess, sir,” Pettus, his cabin servant, said, cocking an ear to the silver calls on deck. “A glass of wine, sir?”
“Cold tea,” Lewrie decided. “I’ve done that, this morning.”
“Aye, Sir Alan, sir,” Pettus said with a tight, pleased grin.
“Hey?” Lewrie scowled back.
“Well…’tis all over the ship, sir,” Pettus told him. “Soon as your boat crew was dismissed, they were all bragging on it.”
“It’s not official ’til we get back to England, Pettus,” Lewrie pointed out to him. “ ’Til then… ‘Captain,’ or a plain ‘sir,’ will suit. And, for a long time after. Damned silliness,” he scoffed.
“Well, sir… I’ve served a vicar, and a bishop, but they don’t hold a candle to a Knight of the Bath,” Pettus said, almost sulking to be denied.
“You served a parcel o’ drunks at that inn in Portsmouth, ’fore you came away t’rejoin, too,” Lewrie said with a wry grin, “and, most-like one’r two o’ them were titled, so it don’t signify. Unless it’d look good on yer references, do ye ever wish t’leave my service.”
“Why would I wish to do that, sir?” Pettus rejoined, in merry takings. “Being a knight’s ‘man’ puts me a leg up over most other gentlemen’s servants.”
“Cap’m’s cook… SAH!” the Marine sentry bawled, smashing his musket butt and boots on the deck outside.
“Enter!” Lewrie called back, rising to go to the dining-coach, and his table. “Come on, catlin’s… tucker!”
Yeovill bustled in with a large, shallow wooden box-like tray, covered with a cloth. “Good mornin’ to you, Sir Alan! We’ve somethin’ special, to celebrate. And, somethin’ special for the cats, to boot!”
Dammit! Lewrie groused; This could get irksome, all this “Sir” shit… it’ll be bowin’ an’ scrapin’, next!
He would have fired off a bit of temper, a swivel-gun’s worth, perhaps, not an 18-pounder of “damn yer eyes!” but, when he beheld his dinner, he let it slide.
“All fresh from shore this mornin’, sir,” Yeovill boasted. “A parcel of shrimp, grilled in lemon and butter… drippy bacon salad, boiled field peas, and”-Yeovill pointed to each as he named them, revealing the best for last-“spicy jerked guinea fowl, sir! Oh, I’ve a mango custard for a sweet, too, sir… with vanilla, nutmeg, cinnamon, and cream.”
“Well now, this is a grand treat, Yeovill,” Lewrie agreed as he sat down. “Jerked, ye say? That’s…?”
“An island style of seasonin’, Sir Alan, sir!” Yeovill beamed. “Peppers and chilies, sweet spices, all together. Zestiest, tangiest saucin’ ever I put in my own mouth.”
“A white wine, sir?” Pettus suggested. “You’ve still most of a crate of sauvignon blanc.”
“Cool tea,” Lewrie reiterated. Long before in the West Indies, a neglected pot of tea, an unlit warming candle, had forced him to sip the rest; that, or toss it out the transom sash-windows and have his old cabin servant, Aspinall, brew up another. With lemon and sugar, it had proved refreshing, and Lewrie had had Aspinall make up half a gallon each morning, ’til the tropic sun was “below the yardarms” and he could switch to wine before his supper.
Yeovill had even laid aside some un-seasoned shrimp, de-tailed and peeled for the cats, along with strips of guinea fowl. Toulon and Chalky did not stand on seniority, naval or social, and dug into their bowls with gusto; Chalky had the odd tendency to purr while he ate!
And, after a few sampled bites from each dish, so did Lewrie!
After such a fine repast, it was even harder for Lewrie to keep his eyes open, but… there was personal mail to be read. He sorted it out into the most-likely agreeable, first, saving those from tradesmen and his least favourite kin for last.
His solicitor, Mr. Matthew Mountjoy, assured him that he owed no debts, with a long column of double-entry incomes and out-goes to tailors, chandlers, cobblers, hatters, and grocers showing that all his notes-of-hand turned in by them to Mountjoy had been redeemed to the ha’pence.
There was profit, too, now deposited to his account at Coutts’ Bank. Admiralty Prize-Court had finally awarded him his two-eighths for the L’Uranie frigate that he’d taken in the South Atlantic… in 1798! She had not been “bought in” by the Navy right away, but laid up in-ordinary for survey and inspection, for years, before going into the graving docks, and the idle time had not been kind to her material condition. There had been another British two-decker “in sight” when she’d struck, so he only got ?1,250 for her, but still…
But, there was Captain Speaks, and his furious demands for his bloody Franklin-pattern coal stoves that he’d purchased with his own funds for HMS Thermopylae before he’d come down with pneumonia in the Baltic and North Sea Winter, and Lewrie had relieved him of command.
Thermopylae was now in the Bay of Bengal, and might be for the next five years; her Purser, who had offered to ship them off to good Captain Speaks, had not, and was still aboard her. Any letter Speaks sent in search of his ironmongery took six months to reach her, with no guarantee that the letter might not be eaten by termites or Indian ants at Calcutta or Bombay before Thermopylae returned to port after a four-month cruise-longer if she could re-victual in a foreign port-and even a prompt reply would take six more months to make its way back to England. Since Captain Speaks very much doubted if the frigate needed heating stoves in the East Indies, he was raving to discover where they might have been off-loaded! Did he not get satisfaction, he threatened legal action, had retained a serjeant to press his case in Common Pleas, and etc. amp; etc., liberally sprinkled with dire suspicions that Lewrie was up to his eyebrows in collusion with a crooked purser! He would not be brushed aside in such a brusque manner!