C H A P T E R 3

Mi’ng arf on a . . . !” Lewrie cursed as he struggled to rise, running a tongue over his teeth to see if they were still all there. He tasted hot blood, coppery-salty; could almost smell it, like the damp winds off the Thames. “Get th’ baftuds!” he roared to his “gang” as he got to his feet again, knocked down with a (fortunately) empty chamber pot swung at his head by a desperation-crazed sailor just off a West Indies trader.

It had sounded like a mischievous lark when they’d set out on their raid earlier in the evening. Surround a ramshackle old lodging house converted to a sailors’ brothel; confer on the sly with the old Mother Abbess who ran it, so she could sell half a dozen or so of her worst-paying customers, who had taken the place over as a refuge, into the hands of the ’Press; creep up on them as they were well-engaged with girls, passed out drunk or asleep, and take them in a well-timed rush.

“’Ere’s yer hat, sir,” Cony offered.

“Phankee, Cony,” Lewrie attempted to reply. “Bu’ where’f me head?” He was only half-jesting, as his vision swam.

“Split yer lip, sir . . . looks worse’n h’it ’tis.”

Whores were shrieking, furniture banging, the pairs-of-stairs thundered ominously, making the thin lath and plaster partitions judder like the old pile was about to come down about their ears. Harsh male voices roared defiance on either side, with the occasional cry of a man getting the worst of some encounter. Truncheons beat a meaty tattoo, punctuated by the sound of a door being smashed down.

A shadow flitted past Lewrie’s notice from one of the rooms, loomed up in front of him. It was a sailor, a teenaged topman by his build. He gave a great gasp as he realized he’d dashed the wrong way, skidding to a halt with his mouth open to cry out.

“In th’ Kinf’s name!” Lewrie shouted first, bringing his truncheon down to thud on the lad’s shoulder and neck. The fellow dropped like a meal sack.

Damme, but that felt good! Lewrie exulted to himself.

“Oy, min’ me furnishin’s, yew!” the Mother Abbess commanded as she lumbered her bulk up the stairs. “Gawd, one o’ me very baist fackin’ cheers smashed! Ahh, shut yir gob, Helena! Stewpid bitch!”

A spectacularly developed young whore, all poonts and angular curves, was wailing her head off, garbed only in a thin, open, man’s shirt. Lewrie stopped to judge her performance for a stunned moment.

“Clumsy bastits, take keer, will ’ee, now!” the barge-shaped Mother Abbess carped. “Nought woz said ’bout trashin’ me place, sir! Fiffy poun’ damages, ye done, if it’s a fackin’ farthm’!”

“You wished them out, ma’am,” Lewrie commented, spitting in a corner to clear his mouth. “You should have liquored ’em better, ’fore we came. They’d have gone easier.”

“Liquor ’em, hah!” the old whoremongress cackled mirthlessly. “An’ thaim ’thout tuppence betwixt ’em? Free gin, it’d been, an’ ’ey’d a got suspaictin’. Helena, will ’ee stop ’at caterwaulin’? Ye ain’t hurted. Hesh, hesh’r ye will be!”

The dark-haired girl hiccupped to sudden silence and leaned on the broken jamb of the door to her grubby little cubicle. Perhaps because of her mistress’s harsh glower, and her pudgy shaken fist, sign of a sound thrashing later. Perhaps because the sounds of melee diminished at last, with only the odd thud now and again, or a heartbreaking groan or two of pain.

“Ah, there ye be, sir,” Lewrie’s burly bosun’s mate reported as he rumbled down the passageway, dragging a squirming sailor under his arm in a headlock. “Got ’em all, we did, sir. Eight hands, t’gither. All prime seamen. Oh, make ’at nine, sir. See ye got one, too!”

“Lemme go, ya bastard!” the “prime seaman” in the headlock hissed. “I gotta p’rtection! A ‘John Comp’ny’ p’rtection!”

“Now what’s a West Indian trader called the Five Sisters doing with an East India Company Protection, hmm?” Lewrie smirked. “And how recently did you buy it? Wasted your money on a forgery, if you did. There’s no protection covers you. Face it, man . . . you’re took fair.”

“Sir, f’r God’s sake!” The man wriggled to face him, looking much like a beheaded victim under the burly bosun’s Henry-the-Eighth-ish armpit. “Frigate stopped us down-Channel, soon’z we wuz in Soundin’s. Took twelve hands . . . put eight Navy aboard t’work her in. We anchor in the Downs, befogged, an’ a Nore tender takes ’nother eight! An’ only lef’ us four t’do their work!”

“An’ how many volunteered, hmm?” The bosun purred, lifting the man almost off his feet, forcing him to look up at him awkwardly.

“Well, half o’ ’em, th’ firs’ time, an’ . . . three th’ last,” the seaman confessed sheepishly, then found some courage. “But that’z coz they’d been took, no matter, an’ least if ya volunteers, ya gets the Joinin’ Bounty, an’ yer pay gets squared, on th’ spot, see—”

“Then why not emulate them, and volunteer yourself, not sneak about?” Lewrie asked him. “Don’t you wish to serve your king?”

“King George ain’ off’rin’ twenny-five guineas th’ man, f’r a roun’ voyage, sir. Hoy, yer right, sir! I’m a volunteer, sir!”

“Much too late f’r that,” the bosun chuckled, shaking his whole frame, and jiggling the reluctant sailor with him. “Matey,” he cooed.

“Bloody . . . !” Cony whispered under his breath. “Twenty-five guineas! ” Those were royal wages, and the war not even barely begun!

Of course, it was suspect whether those merchant masters and ships’ husbands who offered such royal wages would ever pay up, for many were happy to see the Navy press their hands before putting in and paying off. In some cases, they even connived at it with Impress officers who’d tip them the wink, for a bribe, and certify that all wages were accounted for, up to date of impressment. And Navy hands had to be put aboard to assure that a ship had enough hands to reach harbour; what amounted to free labour. It was a wonderful bargain.

Lewrie had a chary eye for the Mother Abbess of the brothel, too. Twenty-five guineas, these last fortunate sailors had pocketed, yet now they were so poor they “hadn’t tuppence betwixt ’em?” Quim and gin, room and board, with perhaps more, paid the woman to shelter them before Five Sisters was laden and ready to sail, with a midnight dash from whorehouse to the docks at the last minute . . . a fee paid too, perhaps, for “long clothing” so they could do their dash without being recognised as sailors. And the forged protections . . .

And, Lewrie realised, she’d just made an additional ninety shillings from his own pocket, as the bribe price for revealing them!

They must have been too noisy, demanding, or upsetting . . . or had spent too freely too quickly. Else, she’d have been glad to have merely stripped them of their last farthing before turning them out her door and waving her fond goodbyes. Else, she might have simply sold them to merchant-ship crimps for more money. There must be some small measure of revenge being exacted, if she’d stoop to a Navy pressgang in Wapping.

“Any commotion in the streets yet?” Lewrie asked, going to the door to Helena’s squalid little bedchamber, and reaching past her for a fairly clean towel with which to dab his damaged lip.

“Nary a peep, sir,” the bosun assured him. “I’d ’spect ev’ryone about’d admire t’get a good whorehouse back in service.”

“Yes, it does seem to cater excellent wares,” Lewrie chuckled, still looking at Helena. The girl glanced down, fetchingly shy, then back up; a bolder, practiced “come-hither” twinkle to her eyes.

“’Ere, lemme tend yer lip, sir,” Helena cooed, taking the towel and dipping it in a water basin. “Can’t let a fine gen’lm’n such’z yerself leave our house lookin’ bedraggled, can we, now?”

“Get ’em in irons, Bosun, and we’ll be on our way, before the situation, and the neighbourhood’s mood, changes on us,” Lewrie said.

“Ya gotta go s’ quick then, sir?” Helena pouted playfully.

“I, uhm . . .” Lewrie sighed. It had been six weeks since he’d reported for duty at Deptford, six weeks since Caroline had departed for home and the children, torn in two by her affections and duties. Helena was a wonder, compared to her drabber sisters in the knocking-shop, most of whom could only look delectable to men who’d been six months on-passage, and had no taste to begin with. Helena was young, not over sixteen or so, not so coarsened by the trade, and . . .

And his man Cony, who had so inexplicably insisted on volunteering, in spite of the obvious advantages and comforts Anglesgreen afforded him, was practically breathing over his shoulder. Anything Cony might see would be sure to find its way to Caroline, sooner or later . . .

And there was the threat of the Mob. Other sailors might see them, and drunkenly decide to brawl to “liberate” their fellow tars. Civilians full of anger, or boredom, who’d raise the hue and cry, and set upon them, the brutish instruments of oppression by the national government against their local. Englishmen, being enslaved by other Englishmen! It would be too much, and the only voice those prickly, pridefully independent locals had was the Riot.

“Some other time, perhaps?” Lewrie promised vaguely, tipping his hat to her. She curtsied to him quite prettily, spreading the bottom hems of her shirt, her only garment, like the heavy skirts of a ball gown, which rewarded him with a disconcertingly pleasant view.

“Let’s go, Bosun . . . Cony,” Lewrie coughed regretfully.

“Come back, do!” the girl whispered as the others preceded him to the stairs, reaching out her room to cup his face in her hands and kiss him with a deep, if lying, passion. “An’t been with a real gen’lm’n, not workin’ ’ere, sir. An’ la, I’d admire ta!” she teased in a small and throaty tone.

“Christ on a crutch!” he could but moan.

“Doubt they spoiled yer beauty, Lewrie,” Captain Lilycrop told him after their surgeon’s mate had attended his hurt and taken a stitch or two in his upper lip. “An’ ye done good service this night, damme’f ye haven’t. So, take cheer,” the old man comforted, offering him an ancient leather tankard full of light brown ale.

One of the few delights (admittedly perhaps the only delight) of the Impress Service was serving under his old captain from the Shrike brig again. Lieutenant Lilycrop, now a lofty post-captain, had lost a foot and shin at Turk’s Island in ’83, just weeks before the peace, and the end of the American Revolution. He’d lost Shrike to Lewrie, too, when Admiral Hood had appointed him to take her over. But Hood had also promised to stand patron to the tarry-handed old Lilycrop, perhaps the oldest, and most without patronage, Commission Sea Officer in the Fleet, until that time.

Lilycrop’s hair was thinner, just as cottony white, but better dressed these days; his pigtailed, plaited seaman’s queue, which had hung to his waist, was now neatly braided, perfectly ribboned, a fitting (and more fashionably short) adjunct to the awesome dignity the old man exuded in his heavily gold-laced captain’s “iron-bound” coat. His breeches, waistcoat and shirt front were snowy white, not tarry, tanned or smudged by shipboard penury. He now sported silk stockings (one at least), an elegant shoe with a solid-gold buckle, and his old straight, heavy dragoon sword had been replaced by an almost gaudy new blade and scabbard. And his pegleg was a marvel of ebony wood inlaid with gold and ivory dolphins, anchors, crossed cannon and sennet-like braidings as intricate as ancient Celtic brooches.

Exquisitely tailored he might be, but Captain Lilycrop was still the solid, roly-poly pudding, with a stomach as round as a forty-two pounder iron shot. And nothing could be done about that Toby Jug of a phiz, all wrinkles and creases; though his face was now wracked by good food and drink, not sun and sea. The same merry brown eyes lurked and gave spark deep within the recesses of snowy brows and apple cheeks. The same old Lilycrop, thank the Good Lord.

“Near thing, e’en so, sir,” Lewrie commented, rotating his neck and shoulders. “God, what a shitten business. The Mother Abbess . . .”

“Old Bridey?” Lilycrop snickered, rubbing a thumb as thick as a musket barrel alongside his doorknob of a nose. “Well, what could she do? They were ‘skint’—eatin’ th’ ole mort outa house’n home—an’ rogerin’ like ’twas their private rooms. Bridey, well . . .” Lilycrop sighed, sitting himself down near Lewrie. “Aye, I know she looks thick as a bosun, an’ fierce-faced’z th’ Master at Arms, but ’tis a fearsome trade. Knew her o’ old, I did. Just made topman, I had, Lord . . . fourteen’r so . . . ’bout when Noah was a quartermaster’s mate . . . hee hee!” the old man recounted wistfully. “First man’s pay in me pockets, first seaman’s run ashore. No more ship’s boy. An’ I run inta Bridey. ’Nother knockin’-shop, no so far from where you an’ th’ lads were t’night. A rare ole time I had with Bridey. Couldn’t o’ been a quim-hair older’n fourteen herself back then, oh, she was a rare Irish beauty . . . all ruddy hair, blue eyes, and skin’z pale an’ soft’z cream! ’Course,” Lilycrop harrumphed remorsefully, “I was a diff’rent sort myself back then, too. We kept in touch, Bridey an’ I.”

“So tonight was more a sort of . . . mutual favour, sir?” Lewrie inquired.

“She needed p’rtection, I need seamen,” Lilycrop shrugged his assent. “An’ I drop by, now’n again, visit her establishment . . .”

“Just to keep your hand in, sir?” Lewrie snickered, though it hurt a bit.

“So t’ speak, young sir,” Lilycrop wheezed. “Bridey allus did treat her girls better’n most, got th’ handsomest. An’ treated her oldest’n best customers t’ th’ finest her house has t’ offer. Did ye do her much damage?”

“Some, sir. Nothing too sore, I suspect, but—”

“Got her ear t’ th’ ground, Bridey does, Mister Lewrie,” the old man snorted, coming up for air from his ale tankard like a seal blowing foam. “Bridey’ll be back in business t’morro’ night, but I s’pect she’ll come ’round here, all blowin’ an’ huffin’ ’bout her damages. She’ll demand th’ Crown square it for her . . .”

“Make you several attractive offers, sir?” Lewrie smirked. The smirk was easier on his lip than the full-mouthed grin.

“Oh, indeed!” Lilycrop beamed like a beatific cherub, and sucked air through his teeth in expectation. “Like I say, she’s some damned handsome quim in her stable, oh my, yes! An’ a poor ole cripple such’z myself can’t do ’em that much harm, th’ little darlin’s . . . anyways, I ’spect, like I said, that she’ll have more trade f’r us. I’ve expense money ’nough t’ cover half o’ her damages, an’ she can make up th’ overage. But, she’ll whisper th’ name an’ th’ address o’ sev’ral more bawdy houses an’ hideaways, where seaman’re t’ be found. An’ put some o’ her new competition’s noses outa joint, inta th’ bargain. Oh, ’tis a grand bus’ness, th’ Impress Service, Lewrie! A toppin’ bus’ness!”

It was for Lilycrop, at any rate. And, as Regulating Captain for the Deptford district, he didn’t have to risk life and limb out in the streets, either! He had his lieutenants to do “the dirty.”

And he was finally making himself, in the twilight of his naval career, a truly princely living. Lewrie hadn’t dared to probe into another officer’s affairs—a friend’s affairs—but he had seen Lieutenant Bracewaight’s ledgers a few days after reporting for duty. They’d shared a brace of wine bottles at their rendezvous tavern where they both lodged, and Bracewaight, he of the missing hand, the eyepatch and the wooden dentures, had left them open when he jaunted out back for the “jakes.”

Still carried by the Navy Pay Office as a half-pay officer with a disablement pension, plus Impress Service allowances and subsistences, the swarthy swine was making fourteen shillings sixpence per day —more than a senior post-captain in command of a 3rd Rate!— and with travel and lodging reimbursed on his own say-so, plus the bonuses paid—five shillings for each raw landsman volunteer signed, up to ten shillings for each ordinary or able seaman brought in, by hook or by crook! And Lewrie rather doubted if Captain Lilycrop was maintained per diem in any less fashion, or denied any bounties of recruitment.

So far, up until that evening, that is, Lewrie had been spared the sordid side of the ‘press. He’d run the tender from Deptford Hard downriver to the Nore, full of hopeful innocents or gloomy experienced seamen. He’d set up shop, to assist the other officers, at rendezvous taverns up and down the river; the Horse & Groom at Lambeth Marsh, the King’s Head at Rotherhithe, and the Black Boy & Trumpet at St. Katherine’s Stairs. They’d lay on music, horn-pipes, beat the drum, and go liberally with rum and ale. His “gang” was half a dozen swaggering Jolly Jacks, True-blue Hearts of Oak, as gay and “me-hearty” as any gullible young calfhead could wish for. They were full of a fund of stories, chanties, japes and cajolery. Enough cajolery that many disappointed landsmen, many a young lad, had enlisted. And real, tarry-handed tarpaulin men, experienced sailors, had joined the Navy during those recruiting parties. Like the men pressed at sea off the Five Sisters, they at least had a chance to claim the Joining Bounty, and go with a pack of their old shipmates, instead of being shoved into just any old crew. They might return to a warship they’d served in before, with an officer they trusted! Navy work might not pay as high as merchant, but the crews were much larger, so the labour was shared out in smaller dollops. The food was regulated in quantity and quality, and in the Navy at least, they could complain, within reasonable bounds, if it wasn’t. And there was the liberal rum issue, too!

And there was the excitement, the danger and the glamour of it all, for sailors and landlubbers alike. For many, it was a means of escaping their dreary existence. Boredom played a part, as did failure at trade or domestic service, as did poverty. For many farm labourers, enlisting in the Navy meant freedom from the narrowness of rural life, the mindless drudgery, the uncertain nature of putting food in one’s belly—and the uncertain nature of the food itself.

And more than a few volunteers were running away from shrew-ish wives, demanding sweethearts they hoped to jilt, too many children at their ankles, or lasses turning up “ankled” and suing for marriage.

Well, perhaps the Impress had more than a few sordid sides, Alan had to admit. At those same jolly recruiting fairs, he’d seen masters connive to offer up their apprentices, to ship them off to sea so they would be spared the expense of feeding and clothing them, then register their indentures at the Navy Pay Office so they could draw off the impressed apprentices’ pay! He’d seen rivals in love, or those selfsame jilted young girls, get their own back by whispering the location of a prime hand. Unhappy wives could find a way to pack off the brute who beat them once too often. Relations, usually in-laws, could rescue their family’s good name, and their daughter or niece, from a marriage or engagement to someone unsuitable, if he was sound enough to man the tops of a fighting ship, or pulley-hauley in the waist.

And there were the lads, bastards like himself, who’d proved to be an embarrassment. Putative fathers would bring them ’round, tip the recruiting officer the wink, and leave them gamely weeping as future cabin servants, powder monkeys or landsmen. Mothers, who had too many mouths to feed as it was . . . widows who might get their new man to marry if the brat was gone! . . . or wives who wished to dally without testimony from sons to unwitting, or absent husbands and fathers . . .

And, there were the raids on taverns, brothels and lodgings, like the one they’d pulled that night. That took a different “gang,” with no need for Jolly Jacks and “me-hearty” True-blue Hearts of Oak. Cudgels of oak, more like!

The brutal fact was that there were a myriad of landsmen, but no surplus of seamen, and it took at least a third to a half of a crew of a warship to be made up of seamen, if she had a hope of getting to sea and surviving once she’d made her offing. Englishmen would not tolerate conscription for any military service; that smacked of brutal central government oppression. The only way left was the ’Press. And only seamen were liable to be pressed . . . supposedly. Though many innocent civilians caught in the wrong place at the wrong time were swept into the tenders. Yet the ‘press was so opposed by local magistrates, and the courts deluged with wrongful-taking suits, the Impress Service so thinly manned, that they could never “sweep the streets,” as the public’s popular image held. It had to be done with craft and guile. With stealth and speed, in the dead of night.

“So you expect another raid soon, sir?” Lewrie asked at last.

“T’morro’ night, I’d wager, soon’z Bridey whispers a few words in me shell-like ear, hee hee! An’ ye done well, so I’ve a mind ye’ll go on that’un, too.”

“Of course, sir,” Lewrie sighed. “Uhm, have any letters come?”

“Nothin’ from yer good wife t’day, Mister Lewrie,” his superior grunted. “Aye, if a feller’s goin’ t’commit th’ folly, then I give ye points f’r good taste, me lad. She’s a living’, breathin’ angel, Mistress Lewrie is. Even finer’n all th’ others I saw ye squirm’ in th’ West Indies. An’ they was mighty fine.”

“I was hoping the Admiralty—?” Lewrie prayed.

“Nothin’ from them, neither. Oh, I know ye b’long at sea, an’ it rare breaks me heart t’see ye took so low, Mister Lewrie,” Lilycrop commiserated, topping up his ale. “I’ve wrote meself. Locker, down t’th’ Nore . . . Jackson an’ Stephens, an’ Admiral Hood, too. Nothin’z come back t’me, official, so far, neither. Did get wind o’ somethin’, though . . .” Lilycrop frowned.

“Yes, sir?” Lewrie sat up hopefully.

“’Member how ye used t’speak about politics so glib, Lewrie?”

“Aye, sir?”

“Well, from what I gather, unofficial-like, ’tis petty politics holdin’ ye back. Some rear admiral, name o’ Sinclair?”

“Oh, shit. I knew he hated me more’n cold, boiled mutton.”

“And, there’s another . . . some retired rear admiral. Not on any board, but he has lots of patronage an’ influence . . . man ye crossed in the Bahamas, I hear tell.”

“Commodore Garvey?” Lewrie gasped. “He’s Yellow Squadron scum! How could he sway my appointment?”

“Aye, that’s th’ name,” Lilycrop nodded between healthy swigs. “Rich as Midas, I hear, tied t’ all th’ nabobs in th’ City. Civilians don’t know Yellow Squadron . . . nor what it means. They retire a fool’r a cheat, they bump him in rank, ’stead o’ cashierin’r court-martiallin’ th’ bastard, an’ he’s Rear Admiral o’ the Blue, respectable-lookin’z anythin’. Rumour is, ye exposed ’im, him an’ a pack o’ thieves, your last commission. An’ now he’s thick with th’ thieves this side o’ th’ ocean who liked th’ old way o’ Bahamas dealin’. High-placed thieves, too. That means under-th’-table, petticoat talk . . . rich City society wives’n mistresses with th’ ear o’ Navy Board wives’n mistresses. I ’spect that’s why ye sat these last years on th’ beach t’begin with.”

“My God, I never thought . . . !” Alan exclaimed. Of course, the last few years ashore, I didn’t give a further Navy career the time of day, he confessed to himself. Show up at my door, back when we’d first started, and I’d have run the bastard through who’d have sent me back to sea so quick!

But now there’s a real war . . . ! He sighed, squirming with impatience to do something more meaningful than coshing drunken sailors on the head and dragging them off by their ankles.

“Fear nought, me lad,” Lilycrop cautioned. “Corral enough men, ye’ll get yer ship. Look at Bracewaight. There’s rumours he’d done an arrangement . . . he fetches in 200 seamen, they give him an active commission. One-handed’r no, he’s still a dev’lish sharp scaly-fish, an’ just as wasted here’z ye are. There’s a midshipman, down t’ th’ Nore, braggin’ that his hundredth recruit’ll fetch his lieutenantcy! ’Course, he’s a high-up Dockyard sea-daddy f’r a patron, I’m told.”

Two hundred pressed men, Lewrie almost gagged? At the rate I’m going, that’ll take ’til next Christmas, and how long’ll this war last?

And with just whom, exactly, did one make such a Devil’s bargain?

He vowed to “smoke out” Bracewaight at the first opportunity. And write yet another pleading, weekly letter to the Admiralty.