Dewey Lambdin - The King`s Commission

• Название: The King`s Commission
• Автор: Dewey Lambdin
• Жанр: Морские приключения

1782 First officer on brig o'war . . . Fresh from duty on the frigate Desperate in her fight with the French Capricieuse off St. Kitts, Midshipman Alan Lewrie passes his examination board for Lieutenancy and finds himself commissioned first officer of the brig o'war Shrike. There's time for some dalliance with the fair sex, and then Lieutenant Lewrie must be off to patrol the North American coast and attempt to bring the Muskogees and Seminoles onto the British side against the American rebels (dalliance with an Indian maiden is just part of the mission). Then it's back to the Caribbean, to sail beside Captain Horatio Nelson in the Battle for Turks Island. . . .Naval officer and rogue, Alan Lewrie is a man of his times and a hero for all times. His equals are Hornblower, Aubrey, and Maturin--sailors beloved by readers all over the world.

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"Politics," Alan griped, once more a master's mate back in the dreary misery of the midshipmen's mess in the cockpit. "Petticoat influence. Family connections."

"Don't take it so hard, Lewrie," Sedge told him. Sedge could talk, since he had been confirmed as sailing master in Desperate. "We get a new captain out of it, and you should be glad for Mister Railsford."

Hood had conferred with the Prize Court and instructed them to purchase Capricieuse into the Royal Navy. Treghues had been made post-captain into the prize, and Railsford, as the senior lieutenant of such a magnificent seizure, had been promoted to Commander into Desperate.

This also allowed Hood and his flag-captain to do favors for some of their patrons' protйgйs, or promote some of their own. Two young men had gone into Capricieuse as lieutenants of a coveted frigate instead of loafing as very junior officers in a line-of-battle ship. More midshipmen had to be appointed into both ships, more junior and senior warrants transferred, giving promotion to them and their replacements aboard their old ships, more master's mates made of promising midshipmen.

"There's always an examining board," Sedge yawned as he told his family now in New York of his luck, by letter. "You've had over two years as midshipman or master's mate. Ask of Railsford and he'll recommend your name if they seat a board soon."

Alan doubted that possibility very much, for there was also the niggling requirement that one had to have been entered in ship's books for six years of sea duty. And from what he had learned from others who had gone for oral examination before a panel of captains, it was more fun to be flayed raw, with the chances of promotion by that route about as sure as the proverbial camel passing through a needle's eye.

Altogether, Alan was getting very fed up with Sedge. He had started out as a graceless lout, and he was rapidly turning into an insolently superior and graceless lout.

"Well, I shall shift my dunnage aft. Good luck to you, Mister Lewrie," Sedge drawled in his nasal Jonathon twang, which sound was also a rasp on Alan's soul.

"And you too, sir," Alan was forced to say to his new sailing master. "May you have joy of your promotion and the pleasures of the wardroom." Damn his blood! Alan added to himself with some heat.

The new master's mate and new midshipman off Barfleur were in the process of unpacking and stirring around the cockpit, so Alan took himself on deck to get away from them.

With all the ships back in harbor, it was a damned busy place with rowing boats working like a plague of water-bugs at all hours and a constant stream of flag signals from shore or the flagship.

"Mister Lewrie, one o' them boats is fer us, looks like," Cony told him, pointing off to larboard.

"Right. Mister Toliver, gather up your side-party. It looks as if the new first lieutenant may be coming aboard at last. Cony, run aft and inform Commander Railsford."

"Aye, aye, sir."

Once within hailing distance, Toliver the bosun's mate leaned over the entry port and cupped his hands around his mouth.

"Ahoy, there!"

"Aye aye!" the bowman in the boat shouted back, putting up two fingers in the air to show that a commission officer was aboard and was for them.

"Sergeant, muster Marine party and side-men fer a lieutenant!"

Alan paced back to the quarterdeck nettings overlooking the waist while Marines and seamen formed up to welcome their new first officer, and Alan hoped that he was as equitable a man as Railsford had been in that position. He had seen just a glimpse past the oarsmen to an officer in the stern-sheets, a tanned face under a cocked hat with a dog's vane and buttoned loop of gold lace, a slightly shabby coat bespeaking an officer of lengthy sea duty, and probably bags of experience, a real tarpaulin man.

Pipes trilled as the new officer's hat appeared level with the lip of the entry port, and he finished scrambling up the man-ropes and battens to stand on the gangway, doffing his hat to the side-party. The duty watch and the working parties stopped their labors to doff their own flat, tarred hats in return or touch forelocks.

"Oh, stap me," Alan muttered. God, he thought sadly, we need to have a little chat someday about frightening the very devil out of me like this. Fashionably a Deist, he was still imbued with the myths of many a governess, who had crooned or beaten a more personal and vengeful God into him from his breeching on, and he spent a futile few seconds trying to discover just what was so bad that he had done, the last few months at least, to deserve such a fate.

Their new first lieutenant, the man who could make or break any warrant or hand, was none other than Alan's former master and commander from the Parrot sloop, Lt. James Kenyon! There was possibly no other officer in the entire Navy, much less the Leewards, who had a lower opinion of Alan Lewrie's honor and morals.

The cruelly ironic thing about it was that it was Alan who had saved the man's command from capture, but had he acted the slightest bit grateful for that act? Hell, no.

Kenyon had been flat on his back with Yellow Jack, lost in his delirium, when they were accosted by a French privateer brig just days from port and safety. Parrot had already struck her colors, her mate at a total loss, and if Alan had not disobeyed him and opened fire into the enemy ship, setting her afire and scything away her jeering boarding party, Kenyon would now be languishing in some prison hulk on Martinique, if not dead as mutton.

But when Alan had emerged from the throes of Yellow Jack himself in Adm. Sir Onsley Matthews' shore establishment on Antigua, he found a galling letter from Lieutenant Kenyon, accusing him of everything low and base that the officer could think of. Kenyon had put out one hundred guineas at least to gift Alan with the lovely sterling-silver trimmed hanger he now wore on his left hip, a parting gift intended for Alan to use to defend what little honor he had left, the next time it was called to question, as Kenyon was sure it would be. The memory of those phrases still rankled; "firing into an admirable foe after striking the colors," "violation of a sanctified usage of the sea," disobedience, insubordination, "eternal shame," and much more in the same vein. Kenyon had sworn on paper that he could no longer stomach having Lewrie anywhere near him, and were it in his power, he would toss him out of the Navy before he befouled it with a loathsome stench.

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.

"Keep a civil tongue in your head, boy," Kenyon ordered. "So poor Claghorne is a new commission officer, senior in a victory over a more powerful foe, and what's the reward for a faithful first?"

"Promotion and command, sir," Alan stated, in control again of his emotions.

"Yes. And would they transfer him into another ship?"

"If they had half a brain, sir, given the circumstances."

"Aye, they would, but old Onsley is not blessed with brains, is he, Lewrie? More tripe and trullibubs upstairs to match the suet down below. What sort of chance do you think Claghorne had in command of a crew that knew him for a man who once was forced to strike? Whether or not there was a chance to fight that privateer, he was in command, and his decision was correct, simply because he was a senior officer, do you comprehend that, Lewrie? You disobeyed him!"

"So you'd rather be dead or in chains, sir?" Alan demanded.

"Damn you to hell, sir!" Kenyon spat. "Have you learned no shame, no sense of guilt for what you have done? You cost a good man his life."

"I saved yours, and every man-jack aboard, sir," Alan retorted. "Besides, Claghorne was ready to strike as soon as he saw that brig, and nothing you or anyone else could have said would have changed his mind, and not doing everything in one's power to prepare a ship to fight, or offering no resistance when there's a chance to do so is cowardice, at least a court-martial offense on one charge, sir. But we did offer resistance, and I proved that resistance was possible, so Claghorne should have been strung up, or cashiered. Now it's not my fault Sir Onsley gave that fatuous clown Parrot, sir. Had he given it a little thought, he would have known it was a death sentence, and…"