Dewey Lambdin - The French Admiral

"Don't stand there making gooseberry eyes at me, Lewrie," Treghues blustered. Alan realized he had raised his eyebrows in surprise at Carey's humiliation and Treghues considered it a reproof. "I doubt you know any Shakespeare at all, do you?"

"A little, sir," Alan replied, trying desperately to remember some.

"Let's hear it."

"Um, uh…"

"As I thought," Treghues said primly. "By the heavens, you're a rogering buck with no wit at all, aren't you? What was the last book you read? The guide to Covent Garden women? That Cleland trash?"

The last interesting one, yes, Alan had to admit, if only to himself. "A book, well, a chapbook really, about naval battles, sir."

"Who wrote it?"

"A man named Clerk, sir. A Scot. Avery's father sent it."

"A Navy officer?" Treghues asked sharply.

"No, I don't think so, sir, but it was a most interesting—"

"And I suppose you think that makes you equal to an admiral now, does it, just like this store clerk?"

"His name is Clerk, sir—"

"Fictional trash," Treghues sneered. "Bend your mind to your duties, sir! Take to heart what you read in the Bible this morning. Scotsmen, of all things!"

Since the morning's lesson had been from Genesis, there wasn't much that Alan could take to heart, unless he wished to recreate the human race, and he had already had a fair head start on that issue. Thankfully, Treghues turned away to more interesting things, allowing Alan to escape with a whole skin and to take refuge in what duties he could find.

He did not consider himself such a great sinner, not after all the examples in his life for comparison, so it was hard to reject the wave of self-pity that confronted him. When he had joined Desperate , even after a fatal duel for Lucy Beauman's honor, Treghues had not been so badly disposed toward him, not until that French gunner had smacked him with a rammer. There had been a time when Treghues had treated him fairly, decently, had thought him a 'comer.' To recognize that Treghues treated everyone oddly now was little consolation.

"Mister Lewrie," Railsford called from aft.

"Aye, sir?"

"Mister Cheatham requests your assistance with the ship's books in the holds. Do you attend him?"

"Aye, sir, directly," Alan answered in relief.

Once below with their youngish purser in the bread room, Alan could relax a little, though he was sure that Cheatham had good reasons to despise him after his and Avery's escapade. But Cheatham put him at ease almost at once.

"The Jack in the bread room is aft in the rum stores at present, Mister Lewrie," Cheatham said. "We shall be opening a new cask of salt meat for noon issue, and I need someone to attest as to its fitness."

"Aye, sir."

"Care for some beer?" Cheatham asked, waving a hand lazily at the keg in the corner.

"Beg pardon, Mister Cheatham, but Captain Treghues has me on water and ship's rations for the next ten days," Alan told him, licking his lips all the same. "After yesterday, I would not like to get either one of us in more trouble."

"Devil take it, Lewrie. Take a stoup," he commanded, which order Alan was only too happy to obey. He took down a wooden mug and poured himself a pint.

"Confusion to our foes, sir," Alan said, before taking his first sip.

"Hear, hear!" Cheatham acknowledged, tapping a pint for himself as well. "Now, Mister Lewrie, while we have some privacy, just what have you done that would turn the captain against you so badly?"

"I… I would rather that remain private, Mister Cheatham, sir," Alan said, wondering if he had to stand on the quarterdeck nettings and tell the whole world before they were satisfied. "It is not so much what I have done, but what has happened to Commander Treghues."

"I will allow that he has not been himself for the last month or so," Cheatham said, frowning between quaffs of beer. "There is a question as to whether he is in full possession of his faculties."

"Mister Cheatham, were we ashore in peacetime, Treghues would be confined to Bedlam, playing with his own spit." Alan grinned.

"No matter," Cheatham said. "He is our master and commander, appointed over us by the Crown, and that is disloyal talk. Whether it is true or not," he concluded, ignoring his own remark, which could be taken for the same sort of disloyalty. "All of us… Mister Railsford, Peck, the sailing master, Mister Dorne… look you, Lewrie, you're a good sailor and you're shaping well as a sea-officer. Before the captain's… misfortune… he thought well of you. It is without credence that he could turn on you so quickly without reason. You have friends in this ship, Lewrie, and we might be able to advert your good qualities to set aside whatever the captain has formed as to his opinion of you."

"David Avery did not speak to you, did he, sir?"

"Not recently, though he had expressed concern earlier," Cheatham said, closing the bread room door for more privacy and retaking a seat on a crate. "Perhaps I could be of some aid to you."

"On your word of honor that it goes no further, sir," Alan begged.

"I must discuss it with Mister Railsford, for one, but you may be assured of my discretion. My word on it," Cheatham assured him.

"I was accused of rape, sir," Alan began, feeling he had no one else to trust. He outlined how his father had snared him with his half-sister Belinda, how he had been forced to sign away any hopes of inheritance from either side of the family, and to take banishment into the Navy.

"And you have no clue about your mother's side of the family, the Lewries?" Cheatham asked after hearing the tale.

"None, sir, save my mother's name… Elizabeth. They said her parents are still alive, but God knows where, or whether that's really true."

"Sounds like a West country name," Cheatham surmised. "I seem to have heard the name Lewrie before in some connection, but it does not have any significance at present. Tell me about her."

"She was supposed to have bedded my father before he went off to Gibraltar in the last war, where he won his knighthood, but he left her with nothing," Alan said. "He always told me she was whoring before he came back and had died on the parish's expense. He found me in the poor house at St. Martin's in the Fields and took me in, and signed the rolls to claim me. I don't even know what she looked like."

"But you bear her maiden name."

"Aye, sir."

"So perhaps he did not marry her, but felt some remorse to learn that she had died in his absence and left him a boy child."

"Sir Hugo St. George Willoughby never had any remorse about anything, sir." Alan laughed without humor. "I remember a big man coming to claim me and taking me in a coach. First time I ever saw the inside of one. Next thing I knew I had the best of everything. Except for affection, that is."

Damme, I'm getting maudlin as hell just thinking about this, he thought, feeling a wave of sadness sweep over him such as he had not felt for two years.

"Perhaps you are worth something to somebody, else why keep you?"

"That might explain why I was set up with Belinda, and caught red-handed in bed with her by so many people, especially our solicitor and the parish vicar as well, sir!"

Alan thought a while. "You mean my mother's people may have had money?"

"No way to tell, not out here," Cheatham said. "But my brother works in the City, at Courts' Bank. I could write him and let him make some inquiries on your behalf. If you were set up, as you put it, it would clear your repute with the captain and put your own mind to rest as well. If your father has recently come into money or land through your maternal side, that would be proof positive."

"It must be!" Alan was thrilled. "Why else would he send me off with a hundred guineas a year and force me to sign away inheritance on both sides? Sir Hugo never did anything that didn't show a profit. God, Mister Cheatham, if only you could do that! You don't know how miserable I have been, not knowing why I was banished. I admit I was a strutting little rake-hell. And given half a chance, I probably would be again, to be honest. But nothing as bad as they were, at any rate!"