Damme if she ain’t a grand woman! Lewrie told himself as he plodded east down Grosvenor Street, looking for a carriage, beaming and whistling “The Bowld Soldier Boy,” the tune used when the rum issue was fetched on deck aboard Reliant. At half past five A.M., it was not quite dawn, but milk-seller wenches with cloth-covered buckets yoked over their shoulders were already stirring to cry their wares to the waking houses. Horse- or pony-drawn two-wheeled carts and traps were clopping along, their axles squealing, filled with fruit or vegetables, and young girls yawned as they carried baskets of fresh flowers. The tin-smiths and tinkers were out, the rag-buyers and -sellers halloed their goods. Knife sharpeners, bakery boys with their trays of hot loaves and rolls, old women with baskets of eggs, venomous-looking, un-shaven men with fletches of bacon… the street vendors of the city were already out in force.
And all found it amusing to see a Navy Post-Captain, a man with the sash and star of knighthood, walking when he could ride, and the fellow appeared stubbled, mussed, and perhaps even a trifle “foxed”-did he even know which part of London he was in?
Lewrie took great delight in doffing his hat to the vendors, offering cheery “good mornings.” He could not recall being happier in years!
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
A hot bath and a close shave, a hearty breakfast and six cups of coffee, and Lewrie still felt like Death’s-Head-On-A-Mop-Stick, but… there were things to meet and people to do, to make the most of his brief time in London. There was the College of Heralds, where grave people who put a lot of stock in such arcane things as coats-of-arms hemmed and hawed, suggested, and queried him over what he would like, or what was suitable to his career, to paint on a parchment, and… “the, ah, fees will be so much, and might you wish to pay by a note-of-hand, or a draught upon your bank, Sir Alan?”
No fear the Crown’ll run short o’ “tin,” Lewrie sourly thought; They must do a whoppin’ business handin’ out honours, if they cost the recipients so bloody dear! I could buy a thoroughbred for that much!
With the promise that preliminary sketches, in full colour, mind, would be forthcoming, Lewrie toddled off for dinner, then a visit to his bankers at Coutts’ for more cash, and a review of his accounts. He was pleasingly amazed that the Prize-Court on Jamaica had completed their surveys of the four French warships they had taken at the Chandeleurs-captured warships always seemed to breeze through quickly since the Fleet was in such need of new ones-deciding on a sum of ?50,000. Lewrie’s frigate’s share was a fourth of that, and his own two-eighths amounted to ?3,125! Nothing to sneeze at, for certain! He left ?1,000 in savings and transferred ?2,000 to the Funds, where it would earn a tidy ?60 per annum. He pocketed the remainder, with plans to splurge, quite frankly.
Later, passing a bookseller’s bow-window display, he was taken by the sight of not one but two books written by his old steward and cabin servant, Aspinall! He dashed in and flipped through their pages, which were un-cut, so he only saw half. Just as Aspinall had promised, one was an illustrated guide to all the useful knots employed aboard a ship, and the other a compendium of music and songs popular in the Royal Navy.
“Good God!” Lewrie exclaimed as he read the dedication in the first one about knots.
Sloop of War, and the Frigates
An Officer of un-paralleled Energy,
but pleasant Nature won the Affection
Capt. Alan Lewrie, RN
“Damme, that’s gildin’ the lily, ain’t it?” Lewrie muttered.
“A most useful guide, that, sir,” the bookseller told him, “yet one that instructs even the humblest beginner. We’ve done quite well with it, as well as the music book. In the coming year, we plan to bring out yet another, on the making of intricate items of twine, which the author informs me that sailors will do in their idle hours, as gifts for their dear ones.”
“On ‘Make and Mend’ Sundays, aye,” Lewrie said, unable to resist boasting, “He’s dedicated this’un to me, it seems.”
“You are that Captain Lewrie, sir? My shop is honoured!”
“I’ll have three copies of each,” Lewrie quickly decided. “I’ve sons in the Fleet,” he explained. “You are the publisher, or…?”
“I am, sir,” the bookseller told him.
“So Aspinall’s in touch with you, regularly? Then you have his home address, so I could write and congratulate him?” Lewrie asked the fellow. “And, might I purchase some paper and borrow a pen, I’d like to write a short note, first, that you could send on at once?”
“Done, sir, this very instant!”
At least someone from the old days is doin’ well! Lewrie gladly thought as he strolled out with his purchases. When Aspinall had left his service, the lad’s plans for the future and making a way in civilian life had sounded a tad iffy, but… so far he seemed to prosper. Lewrie didn’t think that he would have enough time in London to look him up for a natter; the best he expected would be a reply sent to his lodgings.
Damme, I should’ve bought a set for Desmond! Lewrie realised; If he’s still in the American Navy. He was forever forgetting Desmond McGilliveray, the bastard son he’d quickened with Soft Rabbit, a Cherekee slave he’d been forced to “marry” by his Muskogee Indian hosts during the American Revolution, on a doomed expedition up the Appalachicola river in Spanish Florida to woo the Muskogee and Seminolee into war against the Rebel frontiers. Their guide, half-Muskogee himself, had given the child his own name after the British survivors had left, and taken Soft Rabbit for his own. And, when they had both died of the Smallpox, little Desmond had been delivered to the McGilliverays in Charleston, South Carolina, and raised as White. During the so-called Quasi-War ’twixt America and France, the American Navy and the Royal Navy had secretly co-operated, and Lewrie had been completely stunned to meet the boy, hear him speak of his Indian mother by name, and realise who he was!
Well, he don’t write me all that often, either, he mused.
A stop in at Lloyd’s coffee house for tea and a place to use his pen-knife to slit the pages so he could read the books later, and wonder of wonders, there was his old school friend from Harrow, Peter Rushton, Viscount Draywick, holding forth with a table of gentlemen on the reality of the threat cross the Channel, and what was the Pitt administration doing about it, et cetera and et cetera.
“Alan, my old!” Peter yelped, tipping his chair back onto four legs and rising to greet him. “Sir Alan, Knight and Baronet, can you feature it, haw! Read of it, and congratulations, indeed! Comin’ up in the world like one of those infernal French hot-air balloons!”
“Peter! How the Devil d’ye keep?” Lewrie cried, pumping his hand.
“Main-well, Alan, main-well, I will allow,” Rushton said with a smug and satisfied smirk. “In town long, are you?”
“A day or two more, perhaps, then back to Sheerness. I hear there’s a war on, and the French are bein’ a bother,” Lewrie replied. Hell, that jape pleased once! “How are things in Lords? Met someone you should know… one of yours, Percy Viscount Stangbourne?”
“Hell of a fellow!” was Peter’s opinion. “Simply mad-keen to have a go at the Frogs with that regiment he raised, and the grandest sportsman going. Has bottom at the gaming tables, let me tell you! Got a head on his shoulders, too… quite unlike half the twits that sit in Lords. He actually stays awake, pays attention, and damme if he don’t make plain sense when he speaks up. Quite unlike me, Lord knows, haw haw! Here, let’s take a table and have a glass or two.”