HMS Chesterfield was an older two-decker 64, bluff and beamy, but, with a more pronounced tumblehome from waterline to her gangways and bulwarks, was much easier for Lewrie to board—this time with Midshipman Grace in charge of his launch. Savage had run across her in late afternoon, in company with one of the few large 44-gun Fifth Rate frigates, HMS Lyme. As soon as numbers and private signals had been exchanged, Chesterfield had made two more short hoists; “First Dog,” followed by “Captain(s) Repair Onboard,” as sure an invitation to supper as a hand-delivered note, or a butler’s china bell. Still in full dress, Lewrie gladly paced ‘til near Seven Bells of the Day Watch, then called his boat and crew away once more. Just at the last strokes of Chester-fields bell chiming Eight Bells, he was at the foot of her boarding battens, and scrambling up. As the dog’s vane atop his cocked hat crested the lip of the entry-port, a drum rolled, Bosuns’ calls began to shrill; Marine boots on oak decks, Marine palms on polished muskets stamped or slapped, and . . . God, there was the dreadful preliminary drone of single bagpipe, before the piper launched himself into a lively rendition of “Campbell’s Farewell to Red Castle,” one of Ayscough’s very favourites, as Lewrie could attest after three long years serving under him; hearing it, and being told its title, every bloody day!
“Lewrie, you young scamp, sir!” Commodore Ayscough bellowed with glee as he came up to doff hats with him, then seize his paw and shake vigourously. “Look at the laddie, will ye all . . . a Post-Captain on his own bottom, just clanking with medals for bravery, ha ha!”
“ ‘Tis good to see you again, too, sir,” Lewrie rejoined. “And, you a Commodore. Had Admiralty a parcel o’ wit, you should’ve hoisted a broad pendant years ago.”
“Aye, and if more cripples and wheezers meet their Maker, I’ll make Rear-Admiral as they fall off Navy List,” Ayscough whooped. “You are delivering orders, or are you to join my motley crowd, Lewrie?”
“To join, sir, and see if we may have a merry time with the foe over yonder,” Lewrie told him, vaguely pointing off to the East, where the French Biscay coast could almost be made out in the quickly dying sunset. “As we did in the Far East.”
“Toppin news!” Ayscough exclaimed. “The Frog shore is crawlin’ with smugglers, spy boats, and all sorts of shippin’, and too many of them still manage to get past us, thin as we are in these waters. How many guns is your Savage, and what’s your weight of metal?”
When told that she mounted twenty-six 18-pounders, with a pair of 12-pounders for chase guns, and mounted eight 9-pounders and eight 32-pounder carronades, Ayscough was delighted.
“Chesterfield is a stout old barge, Lewrie, but a slow-coach,” Ayscough grumbled as the music died, the side-party and Marines were dismissed, and they paced the length of the gangway. “Good for commanding a squadron, but not for helping at close inshore work, either. Rather have me a frigate like yours . . . keep me hand in, partake of a hot action now and then, but . . .,” he said with a resigned sigh. “Now Lyme, there, is fine for the open sea, too, but a fourty-four-gun frigate can’t pursue runners close enough ashore any more than can I. Her captain is already come aboard . . . solid fellow, is Captain Charlton.”
“Captain Thomas Charlton, sir?” Lewrie gawped in surprise, and further pleasure. “I served under him in the Adriatic, sir, when he had Lionheart, back in ‘96! This really is an ‘old boys’ reunion.”
“ ‘Deed it is,” Ayscough chearly agreed. “Recall young Hogue, do you? Made Commander last year, and I made sure to request him when I got sailing orders. He’s here into a brig-sloop, the Mischief. And a damned good choice o’ name, too, for he’s energetic and full of it . . . mischief, that is, ha ha!”
“I’d be delighted to see him again, too, sir,” Lewrie declared. “I read of his posting, but haven’t seen him since Telesto paid off in ‘84.”
“See him soon enough,” Ayscough promised, “soon as I despatch you and your fine frigate closer to the coast. Know how the Royal Navy works, Lewrie,” Commodore Ayscough said with a wry scowl. “Decades of swallowin’ ninny’s shite, and only findin’ a few truly good’uns here and there, so . . . when one finally has the seniority, and the active commission, one seeks out as many good’uns as one can get away with. What place and influence is worth, that . . . employ the best one discovered, and make fond daddies happy, to boot! Ah, here’s Captain Charlton. I think you know our third guest, Charlton?”
“Good God above,” Captain Charlton said, almost gasping in surprise as he strode up from aft and below to the gangway. “The last that I heard, Lewrie, weren’t you to be hung?”
“Decided t’steal away with a frigate and turn pirate out here, sir,” Lewrie japed as they performed the same ritual; first a doff of their hats in formal salute, then a hearty handshake.
“He’d have made a good one, as I recall from the Adriatic, sir,” Charlton told Ayscough. “You must reveal all to me, to us, Lewrie. As we dine upon Commodore Ayscough’s generosity.”
“Speaking of, let us repair below, shall we, gentlemen? I promise you an excellent supper,” Ayscough, as host, bade them.
And a most excellent supper it was, for Commodore Ayscough had always set a fine table, and was partial to his “tucker”; though how Ayscough could provide crisply fresh leafy greens for the salad course, and crisp-crusted, piping-hot bread—not maggoty and hard biscuit—after so long on-blockade, Lewrie could not fathom. Nothing fresh could survive the long voyage from England, even stowed aboard the swiftest packet.
There was a mincemeat pie, the inevitable “reconstituted” soup, of course, but the main course, instead of salt beef, salt pork, or a chicken from the forecastle manger, was lobster, served up surrounded by boiled shrimp, and even the clarified butter was fresh, not rancid from the tub on the orlop, and each diner got a small dish of a horseradish sauce vaguely reminiscent of the French-style a la mayonnaise, or a remoulade! And the wines . . . ! The bottles set out on the side-board all bore distinguished French vineyards’ names and varieties not seen in England since the war had begun in 1793, but for a few cases brought in by Channel coast smugglers every now and then, and priced so dear that even the wealthy might take pause before purchasing some.
“How do you do it, sir?” Lewrie marvelled between bites, and a deep, appreciative sniff of his fresh-poured wine. “One’d think that, by the time you arrived on-station, such victuals’d have long ago run out.”
“Get the bulk of it from the Frogs, Captain Lewrie,” Ayscough gleefully told him. “S’truth! God, the look on your face!”
“French fishermen put out every morning to earn their livings,” Capt. Charlton was glad to expound. “Does one of our cutters or brigs close them, these days, they’ve learned that their boats are too tiny for us to take as prize, so they no longer run in fear of us. British silver . . . a little British silver . . . goes a long way.”
“For wine, fresh food, some of their catch, or . . . information,” Commodore Ayscough cryptically said. “Give the Frogs this much . . . They still manage to mint solid coin after seven years of war, whilst we’ve had to resort to paper bank notes. Not great value to their coinage by this time, of course, what with all the . . . what do they call it, Captain Charlton?”
“Inflation, sir,” Charlton supplied with a grin.
“And what a pot-mess their coinage is,” Ayscough derisively grumbled. “God knows what a denier is made of. Soft iron? But, three of them make a Hard, or twelve deniers make one sol, but you’re still in the range o’ ha’pence. Four Hards make one sou, twenty sous make one livre, six livres make one ecu, and you begin to talk of something in silver . . . four ecus makes what once was called a louis d’or, before they chopped poor King Louis’s head off, that is, and you finally get to gold . . . ‘bout the same as our guinea. All a jumble left over from the royal days, along with local-minted tripe, and how the Devil even the French keep track of values is a mystery to me! More bread, sirs?”
Ayscough’s cabin servant made a quick tour round the table with the bread barge, and Lewrie took another thick slab. Now that he knew what he was dealing with, he could put a name to it; a boule loaf.
“Would the French fishermen run from a frigate, sir?” he asked.
“Not any longer,” Charlton informed him. “No dread of us taking them for spare hands, nor of seizing their boats. Fetch-to within two miles of the shore, and they will most-like swarm you like bumboats in a British harbour. Mind the spirit smuggling, though. Our sailors are not that fond of wine, when they can get rum for free, and most French beers are simply ghastly, but the fishermen will have small flasks of brandy or arrack aboard. Not good brandy, mind,” Capt. Charlton said with a wry expression.
“Pearls before swine,” Ayscough snickered.
“Though the arrack, a rather fiery equivalent to rum, is desirable,” Charlton continued. “Probably stolen from French naval stores.”
“No American whisky, I s’pose,” Lewrie said with a downcast expression of his own. “Grew rather fond of it in the West Indies, the Kentucky sort, which is aged several years in oak barrels. Bourbon, I think they’re beginning t’call it.”
“Dear Lord!” Charlton softly exclaimed, rather in awe of anyone who would prefer such a strong drink.
“I do have two five-gallon barricoes aboard, but God only knows how long we’ll be on-station here,” Lewrie said. “You’ve never tried it, sirs? Might I decant a gallon each for you to sample?” he teased.
“A quart, perhaps, for me, Lewrie,” Ayscough replied, grinning impishly. “For I doubt a Yankee Doodle bourbon can measure up to my Highland Scottish whisky. Usquebaugh, by God . . . the ‘water of life’!”
“I am set down amid fur-coated barbarians.” Charlton pretended to shiver. “Vikings with the palates of Philistines!”
Oh, it was grand to be in company with such fine men, officers he had long before learned to trust and rely upon, Lewrie deemed during their supper. Ayscough, that burly fellow with salt-and-pepper hair, clubbed back into an old-fashioned sailor’s long queue, his cheerful weathered face, and piercing grey eyes! Charlton, still the tall, lean, and wiry epitome of the genial and articulate, soft-spoken English gentleman—off his quarterdeck, of course—and possessed of a droll and dry wit. Charlton’s mild brown eyes and regular, unremarkable features had many times crinkled in amusement in their private moments. And both of them were sailors’ sailors, as experienced and canny as any rough “tarpaulin” man, right down to their toenails.
Away went the last plates and the white wine, and out came their dessert and its accompanying drink; ripe Anjou pears amid crumbled sweet biscuit, drenched in a sweetened brandy, with large blobs of stiffened and whipped cream atop! And with it, a rich, dark Madeira port.
“Magnificent!” Lewrie pronounced it.
“Rather succulent, aye” was Capt. Charlton’s restrained praise.
“Bit off,” Ayscough commented, though he was spooning it up like a starved hound. “Haven’t laid hands on any, as of yet, but I’ve heard there is an orange-flavoured brandy of French distillery, and I cannot help but think that the rob of oranges, combined with a fine and aged brandy, would be even better.”
“I could ask, once inshore, sir,” Lewrie offered, intrigued by the novelty of such a liquour.
“Inshore, aye,” Ayscough said as the dishes were removed, the tablecloth was whipped away, leaving only a bowl of nuts and the port. “To business, if I may, gentlemen? Droop, kindly fetch me the charts, now the table’s cleared, then leave us be for an hour or so.”
“Aye, sir,” Ayscough’s cabin servant replied.
“We’ve three actual groupings of small ships standing blockade, the numbers varying due to refits, recalls, and new arrivals, such as your Savage, Lewrie.” Ayscough sketched out on the chart, tapping one finger near Rochefort and the lie d’Oleron. “Charlton here commands an assortment of brigs and cutters in this area, whilst down South, Captain Percy Lockyear keeps watch off Arcachon and its large basin. He has but a twenty-gunned older Sloop of War, Arundel, to support his smaller clutch of ships, suitable to the shoal conditions obtaining there. A nice fellow, is Lockyear. You’re sure to like him, do you ever meet.
“And I, ‘til your timely arrival, do the best I can keeping an eye on the mouth of the Gironde, that leads to Bordeaux,” Ayscough said with a selfdisparaging tone. “Very wide entrance to the estuary, and sufficient depth of water rather far up, so Chesterfield can sail most of it, but for several forts sited on the tops of the headlands, which out-gun all of us, both in number of artillery pieces, and their weight of metal. Dammit, though . . . that’s not what I am to do with my ship,” Ayscough groused. “I am promised a second sixty-four to join me here, so I may employ two micldiin’ ships to re-enforce our lighter ships if they run into trouble . . . even if both of us would still be too slow to really catch anything incoming or outgoing.”
“Should the French come out in force, Lewrie,” Capt. Charlton said with dry wit, “our brief is to harass if we may, or fall back upon Lord Boxham’s line-of-battle ships and alert him, if we cannot.”
“Aye,” Ayscough added with a guffaw. “Run screaming out to sea, like a pack of hysterical women!”
“Well, perhaps not run, sir,” Charlton rejoined with a twinkle. “Nor scream, either. It would be more of a purposeful lope, along with loud shouts of hue and cry, or ‘tally-ho,’ hmm?”
“Oh, o’ course, sir!” Ayscough chuckled. “Stout hearts, strong legs, and lusty voices. What I mean t’say, Lewrie, is that I can’t exercise overall command of this coast, andhave any fun at all, anymore.
“That is why I will place you in command of the river mouth.”
“Me?” Lewrie gawped in surprise.
Me? Are you daft? he thought, a tad dizzy at the prospect; wee little me, in commando’me own . . . squadron? Ye’dhave t’be barkin’ mad t’turn me loose!
To that very instant, the most he expected to control was his frigate, his crew, and his penchant for strange and nubile quim! To acquire more responsibility than that, he had always supposed that he’d have to attain Ayscough’s age, and that would be years in the future, but . . . well, he was a Post-Captain of More Than Three Years’ Seniority, and times were hard. Even if he was less than a year in that rate.
Could he have physically turned his head and gone cross-eyed to look at his pair of gilt-fringed epaulets denoting his rank, he would have, if only to confirm that he was, indeed, the Lewrie that Ayscough was talking about. He almost snickered out loud at how ludicrous such a posting sounded!
“Hear, hear!” Charlton congratulated, taking the port bottle to top Lewrie up for the coming toast. “After all you did with independent action in the Adriatic, I can think of no one more suited to driving the French demented, and stopping the Gironde like a beer keg bung.”
“Well, I knew the Navy’s short-handed these days, but, Lord!” Lewrie responded. “What do the French have, up in Bordeaux, then?”
“I’ll get to that,” Ayscough told him, pouring himself a fresh glass, as well. “What you have to work with, first. There are five smaller vessels you will command, Lewrie. First are a pair of new-ish brig-sloops . . . our old compatriot Hogue’s Mischief, of sixteen six-pounders, and Erato, with much the same armament. Then, there are the cutters . . . Argosy and Penguin mount eight guns, and Banshee, which is a hired merchant brig, and a little larger, mounts ten. Of course, all mount eighteen-pounder carronades in addition to their long pieces. If you think it best, further divide your forces into pairs, or two groups of three, should you deem such necessary. Daily stations, and patrolling areas, will be up to you, but . . .,” Ayscough all but wheexed with amusement, “knowing you, I am certain that your penchant for cunning will harass the French to no end, and I may rest easy at night with you out there with your eyes wide open.”
“Whilst, pray God, the French do not get a wink of sleep, wondering what new devilment will befall them,” Charlton seconded.
“Hogue is senior, then?” Lewrie asked, knowing that even large one-masted, fore-and-aft rigged cutters were usually Lieutenants’ commands.
“Ah, no.” Ayscough sobered, even looking a shade evasive for a second. “Commander James Kenyon in Erato is senior by a year.”
Lewrie’s lips half-parted, and his face took on a stunned look.
“Know him, do you?” Ayscough off-handedly enquired.
“Second Lieutenant of my first ship in 1780, old Ariadne, sixty-four,” Lewrie found wit to reply. That back-gammoning bastard’s here? he thought, stupefied.
“Took him long enough,” Charlton said with a shrug at the fickle nature of Navy politics. “Must not have had a single decent patron for ‘interest’ or influence ‘pon his career.”
“God pity you!” Ayscough commented with false sympathy. “First ship a doddering old sixty-four, and as feeble a sailer as this barge!”
“Became the stores ship at Antigua, did she not?” Capt. Charlton asked, faintly frowning to recollect. “Seem to recall . . . no matter. Did I not have to hunt about and use up half my ‘interest’ and patronage, I’d gladly let Lyme become a stores ship or troopship, like the few of her sort still in commission, and trade up to a Third Rate.”
“And, toss Chesterfield into that pot, too, God willing,” Commodore Ayscough quickly seconded. “Well, then! Here’s a double toast, sirs. Success to Captain Lewrie . . . and confusion to the French!”
“Hear, hear!” Charlton cried as they tipped their glasses back to “heel-taps.”
“We need a bowl of punch, by God!” Ayscough decided. “Droop! Fetch us the bowl and makin’s for a good, stout punch!”
“ Come all ye bold heroes, give an ear to my song,
and we’11 sing in the praise of good brandy and rum.
‘Tis a clear crystal fountain good England con-trols.
Give me the punch ladle, I’ll fath-om the bowl!”
Lewrie and Charlton sang along to Ayscough’s rough, raspy lead, twice through all verses before the ladle was first dipped, and cups were filled. Kenyon, my God! Lewrie grimly thought, no matter the good cheer; how am I t’deal with him, after all these years?