He seriously considered that Eudoxia's father, Arslan Artimovich, still had his daggers and his spine-cracking whip, and his lion cubs might now have grown so large that they could be sicced on him to drag him down and maul him to death! Yet, she did need help with her spelling…
"I worry about you, Alan. I really do," Burgess told him.
"So do I, Burgess," Lewrie ruefully rejoined. "So do I."
AFTERWORD
The criminal justice system of Georgian England was much like a description of most people's lives in those times, or of a winter's day… nasty, brutish, and short. Lawyers could "double in brass," first for the defence, then for the prosecution at their next trial. Fears of the Star Chamber, procedures where people were accused but never met their accusers face-to-face, never were told the charges against them 'til they were dragged into that infamous courtroom, held incommunicado and tried in secret (no Sunshine Laws then) with no access to capable legal counsel, and executed the next day or so, kept England from developing a permanent, standing District Attorney system for quite a long time. Witnesses and accusers still could not be cross-examined at the time of Lewrie's proceedings, and the accused could not testify for himself, but merely beg for mercy if the verdict went against him.
So I'd like to thank John Kitch, attorney-at-law here in Nashville, for enlightening me on the deadly maze of justice as it was practiced in the late 1700s and early 1800s. Believe it or not, he did it for free; quite unlike some learned, and tenured, law professors at one of our prestigious universities which shall remain nameless (three syllables, rhymes with Wilt) who, I was cautioned, would charge for their information by the billable hour (fifteen minutes equals an hour!), like I had staggered into a house and killed all eleven people inside, just because they were home… or needed another divorce!
Reference books to order, and keep forever as is my wont, on how English Common Law was practiced in court in those days are "scarce as hen's teeth" as we say down here in the South, though Albion's Fatal Tree by Hay, Linebaugh, Rule, Thompson, and Winslow (Pantheon Books) was helpful, even if it dealt more with capital punishment than court procedures; as was a chapter in What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew by Daniel Pool (Simon amp; Schuster). Other than that, even the ever-helpful folks at Davis-Kidd Bookstores shrugged like Turkish rug merchants and went "Ah dunno" after doing Books in Print searches for me. If someone out there knows of a better source, get in touch with me, for I fear that Alan Lewrie's legal troubles are not yet over, and he might end up in one of those hundred-year cases in Chancery!
I bludgeoned my editor at Thomas Dunne Books, John Parsley, to include a map of the mouth of the Gironde, and the southwestern coast of France this time (more like begged and pleaded, really), so readers could flip to it and mutter every now and then when a place-name was mentioned. So far as I know, there were no forts or batteries erected at the narrows of the Gironde during the French Revolution or the Napoleonic Wars… though had / been Napoleon Bonaparte, I would have insisted upon them, fitted with bloody-great 42-pounders, to boot. Medoc, Saintonge, and Aquitaine are rather flat, much like the Carolinas' and Georgia's Low Country, as Lewrie pointed out, and it's a great pity no one every really goes there… not even the French. When it comes to vacation or holiday time, most Frenchmen and Frenchwomen head for the Mediterranean, to Provence, and the southeast coast, the Cote d'Azur from Toulon to Nice… even if the beaches are gritty and gravelly, the rentals and hotel rates are astronomical, and the sea is as oily as the Houston Ship Channel… perhaps light, sweet crude and diesel fuel saves on suntan lotion.
The whole stretch of coast from Rochefort to the Spanish border, where Lewrie blockaded, could be a European Myrtle Beach. Sadly, there is only one touristy development mentioned in my guide book, an ultramodern sort of low-rent Disneyland by the small town of La Palmyre. (It was mentioned in the novel, so flip back to the map at this point, find it and go "Huhh," and ain't this educational?) It's on the North bank above Royan (flip back to the map, again). All in all, even the guide book doesn't call southwest France all that picturesque and "quaint," but then, neither are Beaufort, North Carolina, or the dunes at Hatteras, unless you delight in places like Ye Olde Shipwreck Tavern… Come on in, get Wrecked!… which I do, and have the tee-shirt to prove it. The chateaux of the region, though, do produce some of the finest wines in the world, and give testing tours like the Napa Valley, and, do you see a sign that reads Degustation, it does not mean "throw up here," but means you can go into a local restaurant or tavern and sample local wines by the glass. Well, maybe it does mean "throw up here" if you stay long enough.
Commander James Kenyon and his secret life… well. Sir Winston Churchill once quipped that life in the Royal Navy was, in the bad old days, "… nothing but Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash." If you thought that gay men these days have it rough, most of them preferring to stay "in the closet" to avoid trouble, consider what it was like in 1800! Being found out, caught in the act, could result in being put in the stocks, outdoors in all weathers, subject to the abuse, rocks, rotten fruit and vegetables of passersby, and could result in death. Some could, after release from the stocks, be branded and marked forevermore, much like a thief, which resulted in a much slower death-sentence of shunning, unemployment, being hounded from one parish to the next, and ultimate starvation. In the Royal Navy, the punishment decreed in the Articles of War was indeed draconian; you're caught, you hang.
Oddly though, life in the Royal Navy for common seamen was like the aforementioned "winter's day"… nasty, brutish, and short, as well. Desertion rates were so high that sailors were not trusted off of their ships with shore liberty very often. Instead, after six months or so at sea, bumboatmen rowed out to ships Put Out of Discipline, fetching shoddy goods, smuggling rum and gin, and renting out whores for as long as a sailor could afford to keep her on his rations and rum issue, his "temporary" wife; hence, "a wife in every port," and the mess decks became the scene of drunken orgies, with coupling 'tween the gun-carriages with some blankets hung from the overhead for privacy. So, be careful when you call someone "a real son of a gun," for that's what the bastards resulting were called.
Obviously, keeping up to eight hundred men aboard a Third Rate ship of the line from a good drunk, a run ashore, a chance to "put the leg over" a girl in a real bed, not a hammock, in privacy, was un-natural, causing desperation and "it's just for now" Sodomy and Buggery; much like the temporary homosexuality found in prisons today. During World War II, many U.S. Navy ships in the Pacific, in constant active service of two or three years' duration with only quick port calls for fuel, ammo, victuals, and new movies, perhaps an afternoon on an island beach with two beers and some ball equipment called "Liberty," were rumoured to have developed "Daisy Chains" belowdecks; much like prisons, indeed, and the old Navy term of "Pogey Bait" equalled the modern-day "Bunk Punk"; a young lad who must yield or get hurt real bad by older, harder men.
Equally obvious is the fact that only a tiny minority of sailors submitted, took part, or developed a taste for such doings, for most of them were "righteously" heterosexual, and had been raised in those more strictly religious times to think it a mortal sin. Yet, there would always be some who, until they were "pressed" into the Navy, leaned that direction, and found one or two fellows of their persuasion aboard any warship, no matter the dire punishment if discovered.