Kenyon finished taking the salute and began shaking hands with the senior warrants whose lives he would control from that instant, and made his way aft towards the quarterdeck to report to Commander Railsford. Alan doffed his hat to him as respectfully as he could and gauged Lieutenant Kenyon's reaction as he recognized him.
Just a little help here, God? Alan prayed silently as Kenyon squinted hard and turned down the corners of his mouth in distaste.
"You, is it?" he said, mouth working as though sucking on some acid fruit-rind. He tossed off a brief salute in return, which allowed Alan to lower his arm. "I heard you'd been posted into Desperate last year. Matter of fact, I was hoping you would still be here."
"Thank you, sir," Alan replied evenly.
"No no, don't thank me, Lewrie." Kenyon laughed curtly. "There was always the chance I would not catch up with you, if you had been behaving to your normal standards, and had been dismissed from the Service for licentiousness or another act of disobedience."
"Still prospering, sir," Alan told him, knowing exactly where he stood now, and determined to ride it out with as much dumb civility as the lowest ordinary seaman.
"The Devil's spawn usually do, I fear," Kenyon said. "I see you still have the hanger I gave you. Cut anybody lately?"
"Just that one duel, sir, and that over a young lady."
"What right have you to wear it 'stead of a midshipman's dirk?"
"I am a master's mate, sir, confirmed back in December."
"Indeed?" Kenyon pondered that for a time. "Yes, I'd heard some talk of you being brave and efficient. But we know better about you, do we not, Mister Lewrie? What sort of a sham whip-jack you really are."
"Excuse me, sir, far be it from me to advise my seniors, but the captain is probably expecting you to see him," Alan suggested softly.
"Oh, how droll, how politic of you," Kenyon sneered. "And how unlike you to find this sudden modesty about advising, or disobeying your seniors, as you put it. You were quick enough to disobey Mister Claghorne, weren't you."
"Damme, sir, I saved our ship!" Alan insisted.
"But at what price, Mister Lewrie?" Kenyon hissed. "Claghorne's authority, my honor, the honor of the Royal Navy? I shall attend our captain, but then I'll be wanting to talk with you further on this matter. Don't leave the quarterdeck."
"Aye aye, sir."
"Claghorne is dead, you know," Kenyon said over his shoulder.
So bloody what? Alan thought as Kenyon left.
"Old friend, Mister Lewrie?" Sedge asked after the first officer had gone aft to present himself.
"Ah, he was master and commander of Parrot, my previous ship," Alan replied, feeling weak in the knees. "And second officer of Ariadne back in '80, sir."
"What, that old receiving hulk in the inner harbor?" Sedge said. "You were in her when she was condemned?"
"My first ship, sir," Alan informed him.
"Well, what sort is he, then?"
"Kenyon's a taut hand, very professional," Alan went on, putting on a grin and an air of old comradeship that he most definitely did not feel. "You'll find him a fair man, sir."
Unless he hates the fucking sight of you, Alan qualified to himself. Then he'll be a raving bastard.
"Was he much of a flogger?"
"No, sir, and neither was our old Captain Bales."
"All's right, then," Sedge sniffed in his Jonathon twang and paced away to his own concerns, satisfied that Desperate would be getting a first lieutenant much like her new captain in spirit, and that there would be no unreasonableness to upset his new rating.
Fuck it is, Alan thought, and wondered why these things had to happen to him so continually. First Kenyon's animosity after Parrot, then that bloody duel with that sneering fop of an Army lieutenant. In Desperate he could do nothing right in Treghues' eyes, but had almost won the man over when up pops Sir George Sinclair and his flag-captain who was the same man from the Impress Service that had carted him off to Portsmouth to sling him into Navy uniform. Treghues had turned on him meanly, and probably would still despise him if it had not been for that blessed French gunner and his damned rammer. Erratic insanity could sometimes be a blessing. He had settled the smut on his name back home, found a family he didn't even know he had and a remittance anyone would kill for. A small measure of fame in the Fleet, promotion to master's mate-and now this. Every time he had things in hand, some perverse twist of fate brought him crashing down in ruin, until he did not imagine he would have any chance of security in anything this side of the grave.
"Better people than you have tried to ruin me, damn your blood," Alan cursed softly as he pondered what Kenyon had in mind for him. And he grinned suddenly as he realized that it was true. His father had laid a plot almost inescapable, and look who still could trot his phyz out in public without being snatched into debtor's prison! If Kenyon would use his power as first lieutenant to bring Lewrie down, then he would be forced to fire off his own broadside in reply. Kenyon was not invulnerable, for all his rank and position and talk of honor. The man was a secret Molly, a butt-fucker of the windward passage, wasn't he? Alan had been told that odd goings-on between Kenyon and their host in Kingston had occurred in the wee hours. Alan had seen the men bussing like practiced lovers in the dark coach outside The Grapes the last night in port; Kenyon and Sir Richard Slade, rekindling a boyish passion for each other when their paths crossed once again. Hadn't Lieutenant Kenyon hinted once that he had not wanted to go to sea any more than Alan had, but there had been… reasons?
You'll not have me, Jemmy, Alan swore to himself. If you try, I'll have you! Railsford'll never abide a sodomite in his ship, not with the Navy trying so hard to stamp it out on long cruises. We're not in Cambridge.
Kenyon came back on deck once more, and made his way owards the taffrail, out of ear-shot of the other people in the larbor watch or the working parties. He crooked a finger to Iraw Lewrie to follow him.
"I am sorry to hear that Mister Claghorne passed over, sir," Man said, trying to mollify the man.
"He shot himself, Lewrie."
"Ah, too bad." Alan frowned. Claghorne had been an idiot, but there never had been anything in his life that Alan knew of that would force him to that "Gambling debts, sir?"
"You, you little bastard," Kenyon snarled. "Admiral Matthews gave him a commission after Parrot made port. He got ler as his command, and the shame was too much for him."
"But why in hell would they do that, sir?" Alan marveled. "He's the one struck her colors. Moody the bosun called him a coward to his face!"
"Ah, but remember, Lewrie, our passenger Lord Cantner and his lady, who thought you were so bloody marvelous that you'd saved their lives and their profits from the sale of his Jamaican prroperties, all the gold they'd brought aboard with them." Kenyon sneered. "They went to Matthews and bade him make sure you were written up a hero, and that meant there could be no mention of the colors being struck-not quite the honorable usage of the white flag-and they didn't want it getting round that a British ship had done such a thing. Fortunately, there were no survivors from that privateer brig, you made sure of that."
"Claghorne wouldn't allow us near her as long as she was fire, sir, and I was down with the Yellow Jack myself before we could do anything, so that is grossly unfair, sir," Alan shot back.