The King`s Commission - Dewey Lambdin

"What sort o' letter?" Mr. Beauman asked, fetching out a squat brandy decanter and beginning to pour himself a drink.

"A rather risquй… no, I don't think risquй does it justice. Pornographic, would be more like, sir," Alan confessed, putting on his best shame-face and hoping they would eat this up like plum duff. "She dictated it, I wrote it. As a game, you see. Between bouts."

"Ah?"

"In her bed, sir."

"Aha!"

"With her belly for a writing desk, sir," Alan finished with a shrug of the truly sheepishly guilty, a gesture he had practically taken patent on in his school days.

"God's teeth!" Mr. Beauman, Sr, exclaimed, settling down into a chair with a look of perplexity creasing his heavy features. "With her belly… on her belly, sir? Well, stap me! Don't see how it can be done, damme if I can. 'Course, I never tried writin' down there."

"It's a rather firm belly, sir," Alan commented.

"Aye, that'd help, I suppose," the man nodded, beginning to grin slightly at the mental picture.

"Father, for God's sake!" Hugh exploded. "Whatever the reasons, no matter how innocent they were, people have taken a tar-brush to our family's good name and reputation, our social standing!"

"Start some gossip of your own, sir," Alan suggested.

"Damn you, sir!" Hugh Beauman snarled. "We'll decide what's best for this family, not you. You've done enough."

"And I would be willing to do anything to assist you, sir."

"What sort o' rumor?" the father asked, slopping back a large swig of brandy and waving the bottle at them in invitation, which Alan agreed to readily; he was dry as dust from nerves, and three men drinking together and consorting on how to solve something were not three men who would be trying to stick sharp objects into each other.

"It was Mrs. Hillwood's pride and vanity that brought this about when I rejected her offer," Alan said, taking a pew on the corner of a desk with glass in hand, though Hugh Beauman was still averse to showing him any leniency. "She didn't want me paying any attention to Lucy. I think the woman was jealous of anyone younger or prettier. Not so much that she was truly in love with me, but she disliked losing, d'ye see. And I don't think she cares much for the Beauman family in general, if you can believe the things she told me, trying to destroy my respect for the lot of you. Terrible things best left unsaid."

"Like what, sir?" Hugh required. "Speak out."

"She called you ignorant 'Chaw-Bacons' and 'Country-Harrys.' People with more money than style. She'd have me believe there's not a Christian among you, a one to be trusted. She blackened every name in the family with some back-stairs scandal. You, Hugh, Anne, Ross' husband… even Lucy. She intimated all your morals were nonexistent."

"Goddamn the bitch!" the father roared. "She said all that?"

"Not in one session, sir, but over the course of time."

The Beauman men looked righteously outraged, but a little queasy as well; they knew their own sins well enough, and knew that Betty Hillwood was probably privy to most of them.

"Show me claws, would ya, hedge-whore?" Mr. Beauman ranted. "I'll give ya claws right back. Blacken me children, will ya? I'll hurt ya where it hurts the most, by damn if I don't!"

"In her pride, sir," Alan prompted, feeling safe now from physical harm. "She wouldn't like people in her circle to know that she had a lover spurn her, or that she had to buy his affections and then threaten so much to get him back, no matter who got hurt. It may not matter to anyone about Mistress Anne-anyone would have done for her purpose to try and ruin me, d'ye see. Clearing Anne's good name is only incidental, too."

"It's not to me, damn your blood!" Hugh barked.

"If the gossip sounds like an attempt to clear Mistress Anne, it will fail, sir," Alan told him, familiar enough with what stuck in the mind in all the scandals he had chuckled over back in London. "It will ring false. But, if enough shit flies and sticks to Betty Hillwood, Anne becomes an innocent victim in contrast. A month from now, they'll still be chewing on la Hillwood's bones, and if they ever think of my part in the affair, or Mistress Anne's, it will be favorable. If the affair is handled properly, of course."

"Aye, 't would kill her soul, the crafty old witch!" Beauman, Sr., chortled with a cruel grin of anticipated pleasure at Betty's demise in Society. "Why, we'd skin her alive!"

"My God, you're too clever by half!" Hugh marveled, disgusted.

Alan didn't know quite how to answer that, so he kept silent for once. People with brains were usually mistrusted when they showed off.

"Perhaps it's best this happened after all, if only to spare us a son-in-law so scheming, father," Hugh added, smiling slightly in some form of satisfaction that he wasn't going to be related to anyone as "smarmy" as Alan Lewrie. "You must know that you have totally ruined your hopes of eventual marriage with Lucy, no matter how this comes out."

"I do realize that, sir," Alan nodded, suddenly sobered. "And I must say it is the greatest regret of my life, and hopefully shall be from this moment on. I truly love her, you see."

The frank admission shut them all up for a long moment, broken only by the sounds of brandy being slurped, as they all looked away and communed with their own thoughts, abashed by such a personal revelation usually left unspoken by English gentlemen, who would be the last men on the face of the earth to confess their love for anything other than horses, dogs or some institution larger than themselves.

"If there is some way you could convey to Lucy my regrets as to how this came about, and how I feel about her…" Alan whispered, going for the brandy decanter unbidden. "And to Mistress Anne my regrets as well that she had to involve herself at such a risk. And my undying thanks, tell her."

Would they relent, he wondered with a final tug of hope? Was there some way he could still see Lucy in future, once this was all blown over? He had spoken the truth (mostly), and he had couched events in such a way that he did not appear a total rake-hell; a young and foolish buck, but not a complete wastrel.

"Aye, I'll tell her," Mr. Beauman intoned sadly. "'Twasn't all your fault, though ya did show bad judgement. Like Hugh says, fer the best, mayhap. Few years from now, who knows? Good lesson fer ya, what?"

"Aye, sir," Alan replied with a sad shudder of his own. "Well, I'd best be going then."

"Father," Hugh said as Alan finished his drink and picked up his hat from a side table, "if we mean to save our good name, we cannot send Mr. Lewrie away in shame."

"Hey?"

"At least escort him to the docks. Make a show of being fond of him, a public show. Otherwise it still looks like we have a reason to duel him, or whip him," Hugh went on, distaste curling his mouth at his own words. "Not that he's welcome here in future, but…"

"Best for Anne, aye. Best for us," Mr. Beauman concurred.

They rode in an open carriage, to outward appearances a dumb show of three gentlemen of like minds, cracking japes and laughing together in public before the startled eyes of the quality who had business about the town. They dined at the Frenchman's, shared some wine, and saw Alan into a boat out to his ship, waving goodbye chearly with bonhomie plastered on their phyzes like a painted chorus seeing off a hero in some drama. But it was very final sort of good-bye.

Alan gained the deck, took his salute, and went aft where the captain was lazing about under the quarterdeck awnings, slung in a net hammock of island manufacture, with one of the half-grown kittens in his lap.

"Come aboard to join, have you, Mister Lewrie?" Lilycrop asked with a droll expression as he walked up and saluted him.

"Sir?"

"We've seen so little of you," Lilycrop teased as he dandled a black-and-white tom-kitten. "Wasn't sure if you'd jumped ship or been transferred."

"Sorry, sir, but there were some… personal problems ashore."

"Woman trouble, I heard. Finished, is it?"

"Finished, sir. Yes, woman trouble. A devilish power of 'em."

"A day'r two of pushin' does for most of us, you know." Lilycrop smirked. "No need to make a meal of the doxies. Saves you from angry daddies an' husbands, too."

"Aye, sir, I shall remember that from now on."

"God knows, they're mostly only good for one thing, an' you may rent that," Lilycrop went on. "Give 'em guineas enough an' they'll be fond of you for as long as you want, then take your leave before they turn boresome. They've no conversation worth mentionin', so why go all cunt-struck by some mort who'll most like put horns on you the minute you're out of sight?"

"Surely not all women, sir," Alan sighed, about as deep into the Blue Devils as a young man could be over a girl.

"Aye, there may be a gem somewhere, but the likes of me never could afford 'em or run in the right circles to find 'em. No loss at this stage of the game. So you're back with us for a while? The delights of Kingston have lost their luster, I take it?"

"Aye, sir. I could use a few months at sea. God help me, I never thought I'd say this, but is there any way we could sail, sir? I stay out of trouble at sea, mostly." Alan groaned with a heartfelt ache of desire to escape into Duty, to lose his crushed hopes in a long spell of seamanship and possible action.

"Well, top up your wine cellars, Mister Lewrie!" Lilycrop said with a bright smile, rolling out of his hammock and handing Lewrie the kitten as he adjusted his uniform. "Admiral Sir Bloody Joshua Rowley remembered we're in his bloody squadron after all. Had you been around, and had an ear cocked like a real first officer, you'd've heard of it before. We have orders to head for Cuba, to harry coastal shippin'. Let us go aft and I'll show you the orders. Then you can indulge another form of lust, on our good King's enemies."

"Thank bloody Christ, sir."

"Don't forget to have the purser obtain a barrel of dried meat for the kitties, and you'll not forget the beach sand, hey?"

"Aye aye, sir."

III

Chapter 1

"Dicantur mea rura ferum mare; nauta, caveto!

Rura, quibus diras indiximus, impia vota."

"Let my lands be called the Savage Sea;

beware, O Sailor!

Of lands, whereon we have pronounced

our curses, unholy prayers."

"Dirae"

– Virgil

They spotted her at first light rounding Cabo Cruz, a fine ketch of what looked to be about eighty tons burthen. Lilycrop thought she was on passage from Santiago de Cuba to Cienfuegos, and had taken the pass outside the chain of islets and reefs of the Gulf of Guacanayabo, a safer voyage most of the time, but for this instance.

She was a little ahead of them, too far out to sea to scurry inshore for safety, a little too far west to turn back for Santiago de Cuba. And with Shrike's shallow draft, even shoal water would offer no safety from them.

"Hands to the braces, Mister Lewrie!" Lilycrop snapped. "Give us a point closer to the wind and we'll head-reach the bitch!"

"Aye aye, sir! Hands to the braces, ready to haul taut!"

Grunting and straining near to rupturing themselves, the hands flung themselves on the braces to angle the yards of the square-sails, the set of the fore-and-aft stays'ls, jibs and spanker to work the ship as close to the wind as she would bear, to race as close inshore of the enemy vessel as they could, denying her the chance to round up or tack once north of Cabo Cruz to shelter.