" '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! Fifty poun' damages, ye done, if it's a fackin' farthin'!"
"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 cat-erwaulin'? Ye ain't hurted. Hesh, hesh'r ye will be!"
The dark-haired girl hiccuped to sudden silence and leaned on the broken jamb of the door to her grubby little cubicle. Perhaps because of her mistress' 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 head-lock 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 guineasl" Those were royal wages, and the war not even barely begun!
Of course, it was suspect whether those merchant masters and ship's-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 press-gang in Wapping.
"Any commotion in the streets yet?" Lewrie asked, going to the door to Helena 's squalid little bed-chamber, 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, fetch-ingly 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 drankenly 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, waist-coat 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 harumphed remorsefully, "I was a diff rent sort myself back then, too. We kept in touch, Bridey an' I."
