A King`s Commander - Dewey Lambdin

"Can't you put saltpeter in their food, or something, Mister Howse?"

Lewrie crossly inquired of him. "I mind a rumor around more than a few schools I attended that it was done regular, to reduce the parish pregnancy rates blamed on students. Or faculty buggery."

"I have no definitive proof that such an admixture is efficacious, Captain," Howse grumbled. "An old wive's tale, more like. And, should medical science admit it as a proper medicament… I am operating on a strictly limited Admiralty allotment per annum for the purchase of…"

"Which seems to be going for sheep gut and mercury." His much put-upon captain sighed in frustration over another damned indenture form from his medical staff.

"Should you order the ship back into Discipline, sir, keep our men aboard and away from the whores, you would find my expenditures and the crew's good health, and their moral state, much improved, I'm certain," Howse said, in that truculent, edge-of-accusatory way he'd perfected. "To allow the people to engage in such licentious manner, to 'spend' on whores their vital and precious bodily essences… which weakens their bodies and minds, renders them lackluster and feeble of wits… incites continual thoughts of lust, contributing to their perpetual moral decline, well… I'll say no more, sir."

"I should certainly hope so, Mister Howse," Lewrie snapped, at his breaking point. The reek of fresh paint being slathered on by the bar-ricoe, the din of hammering and sawing, had had him in an ill humor for days. That, and their enforced idleness. "What would you have of me… sir! Lash 'em below, seal the hatches on 'em, and let 'em free only when we need 'em? Sir? Would you be happier if they flogged the palms of their hands raw from 'boxing the Jesuit'? Or would you like a bugger's orgy in the cable-tiers… sir? By God, sir, you hired on as a naval surgeon, not a hedge-priest. Sew their wounds, cure their bodily ills… not Society's. Sorry your flock need to gambol like a pack of spring lambs, Mister Howse. Get blind-drunk and put the leg over some poll, now and then. They're men, sir, not your social experiment!"

"I can see, sir, that discussion at this point is…" Howse sulked.

"You take that tone with me one more time, sir," Lewrie warned him, glad to have someone or something to rant at for release, "do you dare look cutty-eyed at me when we suffer casualties doing our duty… and I'll bloody break you, Mister Howse! Men get hurt at sea, whether it's peace or war. Men die! I'm not your heartless monster to sneer at 'cause we've lost a few since you came aboard. Men I knew, men who served with me long before you brought your disdain, you…"

Lewrie turned away and took a sip of his coffee, on the verge of being personally insulting, of abusing a gentleman. Howse did deserve that distinction, at least. The coffee was tepid. And it stank from paint, tasted like cool enamel.

"That'll be all, sir. Get out," Lewrie ordered.

"Very well, sir." Howse all but coughed in outrage, but determined to be his captain's moral and intellectual superior to the end.

"Goddamn him!" Lewrie whispered, tossing his coffee overboard, out the opened sash-windows in the transom. Porter, minus his arm and pensioned off discharged, Bittfield off in hospital at San Fiorenzo… sure to die of sepsis; Rushing atop the amputated fore topmast. Five dead, a dozen wounded aye, and four of those maimed so badly they'd be cripples and pensioners once they got back to England. Teenaged topmen, first-voyage Marines too young to shave proper. Not too many of the petty officers, thank God, Lewrie thought, or the able seamen the ship depended on. Mostly the feckless young. The worst slaughter was usually reserved for them. The worst heartbreak…

Dolorous as the crew had been when they'd anchored at Leghorn, Lewrie had known… as Mister Howse never would… that sailors were a resilient lot. Beaten and terrorized as they'd been with Choundas close-aboard, they'd stood game, ready to dare to the last. Stubborn pride, courage… fear of letting mates down, revenge for the fallen friends, or that ineffable spirit of English sailors that their ship would win, that their Jester, their home, would never strike. That had been what kept them from falling apart, then. And what would save them now. A great deal of physical labor, beginning with stripping her down to the fighting tops and gant lines, hoisting out artillery, shot, powder, and stores to float her onto a careenage shore so they could scorch off the weed on her bottom, chip off barnacles, search for rot and missing copper. Physical labor took their minds off fell musings.

A long-delayed distribution of a portion of the prize money they had earned had helped. That, and the chance for a spell ashore, while Jester was uninhabitable, and days Out of Discipline once she was back afloat, so they could caterwaul and carouse their way back to feeling like men who were unbeatable.

Poxed, some might have been, staggering dizzily with their teeth gone gray from the Mercury Cure, which no matter Howse's lofty disdain fetched him fifteen shillings per sufferer, but they were still Jesters.

Floating catamaran work-stages alongside, bosun's chairs or wood trestles slung overboard so they could paint and tar, a perceptive ear could ascertain that they were working cheerfully. Fiddle and fife played to divert them. Hands near the great-cabin's quarter galleries chatted and joshed one another. Cursing the bosun, of course, for putting them to such a messy chore, for tar stains and paint splotches on even their worst old slop trousers. Which was about all they wore at the moment, rolled to their knees. The scuttlebutts were kept full and handy for all, the amount of thirst-slaking water unrationed for once. Mister Giles, with only mild objections to the expense, supplied small-beer in liberal amounts. There was fresh food come from shore almost every day, along with the tons of chandlers' goods.

Lewrie sat down to read it over, again, mind-boggled that he had been allowed so much, that Udney and the local Admiralty shore agent at Leghorn were so prodigal with Navy funds. Well, almost prodigal, Alan thought with a rare grin; the prices local chandlers charged were downright sinful, and limited the largesse he might take aboard.

New canvas and thread, new rope cable for standing rigging, and running rigging, new replacement masts and spars-all Tuscan pine or Levant cedar-of the highest, best-seasoned quality. Tar, turpentine, pitch, white-lead, and copper to pay the bottom with barnacle-poisoning, weed-killing lead over canvas and felt, thin sheet-copper to seal that so Jester would be as smooth as a baby's arse, and slip across the sea like a thoroughbred once more. Timber and planking of the best Adriatic oak to replace smashed or wormed hull members and blown-in bulwarks.

And paint, Lewrie gagged again, as the breeze shifted, bringing the heavy odor into his day-cabin. He threw his quill pen on the desk and leaned back in his chair, recalling what a captain outfitting back home in an English port had written the Admiralty, once he'd received the usual, meager, ration of paint from HM Dockyards:

"Which side of the ship do you wish me to do, sirs?" Alan asked the echoing cabins, with a faint chuckle.

Toulon came slinking in from up forrud, low to the deck, imitating a caterpillar, with a distressed, grumpy trilling yowl, on a beeline for Lewrie's lap. Where, once ensconced, he could make his strongest complaints over some new cat-galling disaster. Rather loudly!

"Poor puss, what's got you…?" Alan cooed. His hand came off Toulon's hindquarters wet with dull red inboard-bulwarks paint, which was used to disguise bloodstains. "Christ, you clumsy litFun. You've put your tail in the paint pot? Aspinall?" "Sir?"

"Fetch a cloth, 'fore it dries on him. Might need one dipped in turpentine, too. No, Toulon, don't lick it… God…!"

There was a pair of kerseymere breeches that had seen their last Day Watch, Lewrie sighed; a good shirt, too, if I'm not…

"I'll ask Mister Cony, sir," Aspinall vowed. "Back in a trice." Mister Cony. With Porter gone, Will Cony had risen to bosun, and Able Seaman Sadler, one of the old Cockerels from the times at Toulon had become bosun's mate. Just as Mister Crewe was now the acting master gunner, Yeoman of the Powder Room Hogge was gunner's mate, and the Prussian Rahl was acting yeoman. Another Cockerel, Preston, had become quarter-gunner, though Lewrie wasn't sure that Rahl's eye for gunnery wasn't wasted below, in the magazines. "Cap'um clerk, Mister Mountjoy… Sah!"

"Enter," Lewrie snapped, trying to hold Toulon still and not get paint-stained until Aspinall returned.

"Letter's come aboard for you, sir," Mountjoy announced. He coughed into his fist, looking cutty-eyed to all corners. More softly he added, "and this, too, sir. From your, uhm… banker? He's ashore and wishes permission to come aboard."

"Sergeant Bootheby to muster his Marines, Mister Mountjoy," Lewrie growled, opening Twigg's note first, no matter how he hated doing that; it was official, after all. "Full 'bullock' kit, red tunics and pipe-clay. We'll execute him by musketry, at the taffrail, а la Admiral Byng."

"Can… can you do that, sir?" Mountjoy gaped. "Should, I mean." "No, but I can wish, sir." Alan sighed futilely. "Very well… tell the devious bastard he may come aboard. A tradesman's welcome, do you inform the harbor watch. No honors."

Aspinall returned, to take Toulon from him and carry him off to the pantry for a cleaning with some dishcloths moistened with turpentine. "Well I'm damned…" Lewrie whispered as he opened the second. It was from Signorina Claudia Mastandrea!

He'd gotten several supportive, kindly letters from her, and her keeper Senator Marcello di Silvano. He'd sent the senator the expected "thankee" for his invitation, with apologies for missing the ball that followed. Twigg's doing, damn his eyes! Maybe just as well, though…? Claudia's first note had been just before Jester sailed, and more than the usual social obligation to a new acquaintance; so pleased she met him, sorry we missed our promised dance, do forgive the forwardness and blah-blah-blah… But laden with so much double meaning, that she might have rewarded him with more than one turn around the floor, that he still must allow her to show him that map, that collection… those treasures? That there should be perfect freedom between them? Hmm…

After the battle with Choundas, another brace of letters. The one from Signore di Silvano so outraged that he was being smeared with such a scurrillous set of lies; promises to get to the bottom of it and refute them, in concert with Drake and Nelson; how di Silvano had spoken to his fellow senators and the Doge, would use his every good office to maintain Genoese neutrality, and independence. That Lewrie should consider him a friend, with many mutual, historical interests to discuss when he returned from Leghorn.

Claudia's though… it was almost tearful, that a good and decent man had been falsely accused, and her remorse that Genoa was so ungrateful to him. A stronger hint, concerning her high regard, her inability to get him out of her mind, a wistfulness…? Hmm…

Now, this'un: